US WWII fighter pilot memoirs - Mustang Ace Bob Goebel

  I was wondering what the best American fighter pilot memoirs are. I know that several stand out of course, such as Edwards Park’s wry "Nanette", described elsewhere as a " whimsical and moving account of a young pilot thrown against the aggressive Zero and Oscar pilots of Imperial Japan in the less-than-stellar P-39 Airacobra". Regarded as a classic of the South-west Pacific war - 'Nanette' was the name of his aircraft - it was sold as a novel (perhaps leaning on the 'Catch 22' popularity of the seventies), but, apparently, most of what he wrote did actually occur. Set in New Guinea before the Allied Air Forces had air superiority it is now regarded as a very well written memoir of the period. 'Nanette' was actually a P-400 (taken over from RAF order), and had worse performance than the P-39s which were sent to the Fifth Air Force in Australia, for service in the South West Pacific Theatre.

 Donald Lopez’ "Into the Teeth of the Tiger" is a memoir from a P-40 and P-51 pilot in China who later became deputy director of the National Air and Space Museum, not forgetting of course Robert S. Johnson’s 'Thunderbolt!', a gritty account of the early days of fighter operations by P-47s against the cream of the Luftwaffe, similar to 'Mustang Pilot' by Richard E. Turner ( a disappointingly slim volume)  or John Foster’s 'Hell in the Heavens', about a Marine fighter pilot in the Southwest Pacific. However I am not a fan of Anderson’s 'To Fly and Fight'  (357th FG Mustang pilot’s memoir of the 1944-1945 European air war) As for his friend Yeager, the less said the better. I much rather prefer the far more modest and intelligent Robert Goebel's 'Mustang Ace'.

Goebel joined the 31st FG, the leading fighter group in the Mediterranean, as they turned in their Spitfires for new P-51s. Within weeks, Bob Goebel had flown his first combat missions and had lost his element leader, shot down in a swirling dogfight. But he mastered the art of combat flying. A steady succession of bomber-escort missions over southeastern Europe slowly and then more rapidly forced Lieutenant Goebel to settle in and master aerial gunnery and the mentally taxing high-speed dogfights in which he became engaged. At last, he shot down his first German fighter. And he advanced to positions of leadership, in due course leading the entire 31st Fighter Group deep into enemy territory. At length, he shot down a fifth German and thus became an ace - a P-51 Mustang ace. And then he shot down three Germans in one day on a mission to Ploesti, Romania. He flew to Russia and back, and supported the invasion of southern France. In the end, by September 1944, he had eleven confirmed victories to his credit and was one of the 308th Fighter Squadron's most respected combat leaders. When he was sent home at the end of his combat tour, Captain Bob Goebel was not yet 22 years old. Post-war he was a physicist with NASA (IIRC) and his memoir brims with vivid descriptions of flying and fighting in a high performance WWII fighter. He passed away in February 2011.