Pierre Clostermann died today at 85

[Peter Clare]

See obituary in the Telegraph web site.

[Nick Beale]

And an obituary in today's Guardian Online:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries...740876,00.html

The writer of the obituary is usually the paper's architecture correspondent.

I bought The Big Show when I was 14 and was gripped by it all through that summer's holiday. I think that was got me interested in the late-war period, the first time I'd really seen any account of the fighting in 1945.

Last year in France I bought Le Grand Cirque as a three-part "band dessiné" (graphic novel) — part of the series of aviation BDs "Biggles Presents…"!

[SES]

Hi,
I bought it as a paperback when I was 12 for 3.75 d.kr = 0.5 Euros. Really good aviation books, which get you into the cockpit are few and far between, but this is one of them. That summer I read it about once a week. I never met him, but I got a little close, when I participated in a squadron exchange with RAF 3 (F) Sqn. They have their linebook back to the war. Clostermann's alleged comments on VE-day: "Does that mean that I cannot paint any more black crosses below the canopy ?"
bregds
SES

[TonyC]

I regret his passing, but that is how it is...

How many RAF linebooks there must be which have priceless line-shoots for us to look at now, with little real understanding of the spirit of those who wrote them!

Let's start a movement to have the line-books published! Let's see again the spirit of those who went before, long-dead in many cases (no copyright!!!)

Of the few RAF line-books I have seen there are a few real gems which stop one in one's tracks... let's see them in print, please.

Lines like " ...and I could see the cross-hairs through her knickers" don't belong here (that's one I read...) but there are really some clever and insightful ones... and some hilariously under-stated ones too...

One day, maybe...