The Big Show-Unabridged--Comments?

[kaki3152]

Found a new edition of the "The Big Show" by P. Clostermann labelled complete and unabridged online and decided to buy it. After re-reading this book for probably the 20th time, I have to say as aviation literature,it ranks among the best ever written. The new eddition now includes postwar comments made by Clostermann and old excised passages. Additional new photos also help round out the book. One intriguing guncamera sequence is on the dusk jacket and shows a FW-190 (its hard to tell; the picture is small) under attack.

Comments anyone?

Carlos

[Jim Oxley]

I bought my first copy (paperback) of this book back in 1965. It was a Corgi edition, and on the front cover it showed Clo Clo's J-FE Tempest flying low over snow covered terrain and a train that has burst into flames.

Luv the book. I've read it so often that the spine is seriously wrinkled - and almost anal in my care for books. So when it was reprinted by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2004 as complete and unabridged I snapped up a copy straight away. The extra material is truly fascinating - amazing what had been cut out back in 1951 because of paper shortages.

IMHO definitely one of the very best on combat flying in WWII. In fact I rank it as one of the best three; the other two being Samurai by Saburo Sakai, and Blenheim by Theo Boiten. With Fighter Pilot by Paul Richey a close fourth.

[nick de carteret]

Wasn't Clostermann renouned as a bit of a porkie teller regarding his own exploits or have I got the wrong fellow?

[JeffK]

Originally Posted by nick de carteret

Wasn't Clostermann renouned as a bit of a porkie teller regarding his own exploits or have I got the wrong fellow?

No you are correct, while I doubt accuracy of Clostermann, it doesnt take away from the fact that its an exiting book.

[nick de carteret]

Finally got around to reading 'The Big Show' and whilst agreeing that it is a well written and exciting pilot journal, one has to be truely amazed at some of the laughable inaccuracies that it contains. The most blatant would be the Chapter on Nowotny, which has him shot down and killed by Closterman's section in March '45 while in command of JG 52, with a photo purporting to be him, which is actually Max-Hellmuth Ostermann!

I presume with the book being written so soon after the war that very little research had been done but the talk of dogfighting with great hordes of Ta 152s in July 1944 really stretches the bounds of the book's credibility.

[George Hopp]

Well, since it is noted that the book was initially written based on Clostermann's journals, inaccuracies, such as a/c types, can easily crawl in because what he knew, and so what he wrote, was based on the quality of intelligence he had at the time. Remember the RAF shooting down all those He 112s during the Battle of Britain, or spotting 109s over the Far East in 1941? And, as for giving himself the benefit of the doubt in his writings -- gee, tell me someone who doesn't.

I also have enjoyed the book many times, my first one being a Penguin paperbook of 1958, simply a reprint of the 1951 version. More than any other aviation works I have read, Clostermann makes me feel like I am in the cockpit scared and sweating right along with him.