Arthur Stanley Gould Lee (1894–1975)

Open Cockpit is a well-written account of a Royal Air Force pilot during World War I, from Arthur Gould Lee’s initial instruction, deployment, and return to England to command a training squadron. The book’s best parts were the descriptions from the cockpits of Sopwith Pups and Camels he flew during the war. I had no idea that pilots patrolled up to 20,000 feet exposed in the open cockpits of the Pups, where they had the only performance advantage over the German Albatross aircraft. Lee also has some less-than-favorable things to say about ground strafing. There are insights into the thoughts and feelings of pilots and comparisons between life on the air base and the trenches. One of the best WWI aviation books written.… (more)

first-hand account of a British pilot who flew during 1917.
'NO PARACHUTE' is an exciting find, a uniquely authentic collection of letters written by one of these unknowns, a young pilot with the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) based in France in 1917. Following hot on the event, he recreates breathless dogfights between Sopwith Pups and Albatros fighters, the eerie sensation of flying at hedgerow level in a Sopwith Camel, the bitter cold of high altitudes in an open cockpit, the panic of engine failure behind enemy lines ... all in all, among the most vivid anecdotes of air fighting to come out of the First World War.
From the young airmen who took their frail machines high above the trenches of World War I and fought their foes in single combat there emerged a renowned company of brilliant aces - among them Ball, Bishop, McCudden, Collishaw and Mannock - whose legendary feats have echoed down half a century. But behind the elite there were, in the Royal Flying Corps, many hundreds of other airmen who flew their hazardous daily sorties in outdated planes without ever achieving fame. Here is the story of one of these unknown flyers - a story based on letters written on the day, hot on the event, which tells of a young pilot's progress from fledgling to seasoned fighter. His descriptions of air fighting, sometimes against the Richtofen Circus, of breathless dogfights between Sopwith Pup and Albatros, are among the most vivid and immediate to come out of World War I. Gould Lee brilliantly conveys the immediacy of air war, the thrills and the terror, in this honest and timeless account. Rising to the rank of air vice-marshal, Gould Lee never forgot the RFC's needless sacrifices - and in a trio of trenchant appendices he examines, with the mature judgment of a senior officer of the RAF and a graduate of the Staff and Imperial Defense Colleges, the failure of the Army High Command to provide both efficient airplanes until mid-1917 and parachutes throughout the war, and General Trenchard's persistence in a costly and largely ineffective conception of the air offensive.… (more)