Piece of Cake is a 1983 novel by Derek Robinson which follows a fictional Royal Air Force fighter squadron through the first year of World War II, and the Battle of Britain.
Notable themes are the development of aerial warfare tactics, the Hawker Hurricane fighter, the British class system within its military, and the difficulty of training and integrating new pilots during wartime.
September 1939, World War II is about to begin: The young, brash and inexperienced pilots of Hornet Squadron, a unit of the Royal Air Force's Fighter Command equipped with the Hawker Hurricane Mk.
Returning from a practise flight, he inadvertently taxis his Hurricane into a slit-trench, upending the aircraft and, too impatient to wait for a ladder, falls from the cockpit and fatally breaks his neck.
Ordered to intercept an incoming group of aircraft, Barton attacks what he believes is a German bomber and shoots it down, only to later realise it was a British Blenheim.
He is sent away to face a court of enquiry whilst Squadron Leader Rex, an upper-crust and calmly confident pilot, arrives to take command.
In return, Rex expects strict discipline amongst his pilots and adherence to the textbook tactics of the RAF including close-formation flying and the cumbersome 'fighting area' attacks.
Two of the pilots, 'Flash' Gordon and 'Fitz' Fitzgerald, begin respective romances with two local schoolteachers, French woman Nicole and expat Englishwoman Mary.
Fed up with Cattermole's bullying, Stickwell flies an unauthorised sortie, strafing a Luftwaffe airfield, but his aircraft is damaged and he crash-lands in Belgium.
They are soon seeing heavy action as the German Luftwaffe switches from attacking Channel convoys and begins an offensive against RAF airfields in southeast England.
Hornet Squadron is using better tactics: shooting at closer range, flying in pairs, constantly checking the sky above and behind whilst in the air.
Intelligence Officer 'Skull' Skelton is sceptical about the numbers of German aircraft that Fighter Command is claiming to shoot down, as is Jackie Bellamy who has become cynical about the conduct of the war.
His wife Mary, now pregnant, refuses to accept that her husband is dead and is soon seen hanging around the aerodrome perimeter, which the other pilots find disturbing.
On 7 September, the Luftwaffe launches a massed attack against London and every available RAF fighter unit is flung into action, including Hornet Squadron.
[1] Angus Calder wrote about the novel in 1991, saying that The ex-public school types in Hornet Squadron are variously oafish, stupid, callow, neurotically disturbed or (in one case) positively evil...Cattermole is a relentless practical joker, liar, bully and thief with homicidal propensities which make him (Robinson's text insinuates) just the right type to be a fighter pilot...After destroying most of his pilots in horrible ways, minutely described, with uncannily precise technical know-how, Robinson, resisting closure, is bound to suggest a kind of 'point' by his selection of those who are still alive in the last pages.
However he cannot counteract his reader's knowledge of the Big Fact (the Allied victory), which at times makes his approach to the battle seem wilfully cynical.
As it is, it's superb in the first third, sporadically hilarious, always strongly narrated, but increasingly routine (and repetitious) in its preachier second half: a bulky mixed bag for the WW Il-aviation audience.