However, through the years, the novel started gaining a cult following and recognization as one of the first instances of gay protagonism in the genre, which led to its first republication in 2012, by Cheyenne Publishing.

There, both Jack and Fred have a good time, while the latter finds out they need someone to write the squadron's War Diary and proposes to fill the role, eager to impress the skipper.

Jack, on the other hand, is constantly pestered by the commander of their air group (CAG), Buster Jennings, and so full of work on the ground he barely has time to fly.

On a goodwill gesture, he goes to a party held by Eleanor Hawkins — a former shipmate's widow — with some other pilots, including the Executive Officer of Fighting Twenty, Duane Higgins, Jack's longtime friend and former wingman.

While searching for the ready room, Fred, the first pilot to land on the carrier deck, accidentally collides with Admiral Berkey in a passageway, and the two have a friendly conversation before he goes his way.

[3] During a routine training flight, Fred intercepts a lost army trainer aircraft and is congratulated by Admiral Berkey, which raises his reputation in the squadron.

Their impressive performance earns them an Air Medal, and Fred becomes widely known as "the Killer" to the people of Ironsides, making Duane's envy towards him grow even further.

Subsequent to this happening, both accept Jennings' offer to be part of a perilous "bat team", who takes down Japanese snooper aircraft after sunset, leaving Duane to lead the squadron's strikes in the upcoming Battle of Kwajalein.

Thanks to spending the night playing poker, Duane leads a sloppy strike which ends up with three squadron pilots dead, and is reprimended by the skipper.

Duane later gets angry with his demotion in the next strike and Jack's lack of objections over his marriage with Eleanor, and hints about the true nature of the latter's relationship with Fred, causing the tension between them reach its peak.

[9] After a wave of pessimism grasps VF-20's pilots due their hazy survival chances, an angry Jack lets out a harsh rant a day before their attack on Truk Atoll, which has a motivational effect over them.

Duane's division arrives in time to save Jack, who in turn starts to search for Fred, finding him injured inside his damaged Hellcat.

During these years, he began developing a big interest in military matters, especially related to the United States Navy participation in World War II, which led him to read Richard L. Newhafer's historical novel The Last Tallyho (1964).

The author considered Wingmen as a sort of retaliation of the former novel, since The Last Tallyho presents two gay Navy pilots which "were portrayed as totally irredeemable cowards and slackers", something that pissed him off.

Both novels are set aboard fictional American aircraft carriers in Pacific during World War II, with Wingmen, in the words of Case, "[having] its protagonists a pair of gay pilots who were the exact opposites of Newhafer’s.

Case explained that a major publisher would block a more explicit presence of the latter, which made him thought heterosexual sex insertions could "keep the mainstream reader interested and let [him] tell Jack and Fred’s story.

According to him, the relationship between Fred and Jack is presented as a love between equals and can be seem as a Classical parallel, stemming inside a homoerotic elegy tradition of "the bond of a male warrior couple" — a widespread concept that could be traced back to the Ancient Greek culture and is found, among other examples, in Homer's Iliad and the Sacred Band of Thebes.

Upon release, a reviewer from The Advocate felt the novel is "gratifying to read", stating that he doesn't know "what effect it will have on you, but this is probably how it will affect Case's fellow war novelists: Norman Mailer will clench his fists and swear and refuse to believe it, Gore Vidal will say, 'I told you so,' and James Jones will turn over in his grave.

"[20] James Doig Anderson of GLBTRT opined that "Wingman is a wonderful and moving novel" that is "highly recommended to all readers who enjoy great gay fiction.

"[16] Bay Area Reporter's Jim Provenzano declared that “fans of war stories will prefer this tome, whose focus gets very specific with the details of flying planes and crashing them", summarizing Wingmen as a novel that "reads like postwar fiction of the 1950s, but with a discreet gay affair that does eventually inspire a late dramatic turn of events.

"[22] Gay Book Reviews writer Sirius rated the novel 5+ out of 5 stars, calling it "highly recommended" and "mesmerizing", but criticizing the Scrapbook chapter, which he found "an unnecessary extra.

Set in the same time frame of the original novel while, according to the author, not being a clone of it, Fighters would center on an intense relationship between an Army Colonel and a professional boxing trainer.

It also would feature "much more war-era humor" and several gay characters, including a cameo appearance of Fred Trusteau, which would be connected to the time he almost shot down an Army general plane during his training cruise.