Tail-End Charley: Stories from an American fighter pilot in World War II

On his nineteenth birthday, James E. Brown tries to fake to his flight instructor that he has flown before. On his twenty-first birthday, Brown is on his way home after logging eighty-five missions in a P-47 fighter over Italy, France, and Germany.



Brown's stories surrounding his training and combat experiences in World War II reveal brushes with death, continuous peril and, ultimately, a coming of age for a young man whose freshman year in college becomes instead a heroic engagement with on...