One of the very best personal memoires about aerial combat in World War II. 
 Clostermann flew 420 missions with the French Airforce and then with the Free French and RAF. His description of dragging the still-living upper half of a comrade from a burning Hawker Tempest, after that friend's unsuccessful attempt at a dead-stick landing, is particularly grim; especially as the next day Clostermann was forced to make his own attempt at a dead-stick landing. 
 Clostermann's final flight in his personal Tempest, "Le Grand Charles" was a part of the V-E Day fly-over of London with over 10,000 other aircraft, and his description of the final landing afterward is poetic, as he laid Le Grand Charles down on the grass "like a cut flower" and then wept with his shoulders shaking after he cut all the switches for the last time.