“I learned how it feels when you realize the lights coming up at your airplane are rocket-propelled grenades and antiaircraft artillery fired by people trying to kill you.”
Those are the words of author Tom Young, who spent 20 years in the Air National Guard as a flight engineer on missions to Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. His real-life flight experience provided the necessary fuel for his fascinating Silver Wings, Iron Cross (Kensington), in which an American pilot and German U-boat officer find themselves collaborating to survive in the final days of World War II as the Third Reich collapses. (Read the full review here.)
Young revealed more about his compelling novel in this recent BookTrib interview.
Q: Where did the idea for this book come from?
A: Two long-term interests merged. I grew up hearing my grandfather’s stories from World War II. He served in the legendary Eighth Air Force as a mechanic on the B-17 Flying Fortress. He was a huge influence in my life, and his stories fired an interest in military aviation that eventually led me into the service.
Also, in college I became an avid scuba diver, and I dived on several WWII shipwrecks off the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Most were freighters and tankers torpedoed by U-boats. Every good novel needs a twist: what if two enemies from these vastly different corners of the war were forced to survive together?
Q: What is one of the unusual nuances the two men face in trying to communicate and shifting from enemies to men united by a common goal?
A: My B-17 pilot, Karl, comes from a German-American family in Pennsylvania, and he grew up speaking German in the home. However, he’s very much a loyal American serviceman. He’s also very much an American in a cultural sense, with the casual swagger and quick humor of GIs of his day.
My U-boat officer, Wilhelm, is a tightly wound German submariner who finds Karl’s jokes and small talk annoying. But both know what it’s like to give dangerous orders to crews they love. They know what it’s like to lose men. And they find there is more that unites them than separates them.
Q: Each man faces a moral dilemma on his final mission. What role does patriotism play in the characters’ ultimate decisions?
A: Karl’s orders for his last mission break his heart: he is assigned to bomb targets in Bremen, where he has extended family. But his patriotism will not let him find an excuse not to fly. He doesn’t want to go, but when he finds nothing wrong with his airplane or the weather, his sense of duty compels him to carry out the mission. In Karl’s case, patriotism and duty coincide.
In Wilhelm’s case, patriotism and duty conflict. He has never been a Nazi party member, and he has become disillusioned. When his crew receives what amounts to a suicide order, he decides the lost Nazi cause is not worth their lives, and he deserts to stop his U-boat from going out on a one-way patrol. His sense of responsibility for his crew outweighs his loyalty to the mission.
Q: How does your background and experience add military authenticity to the novel?
A: I spent 20 years with the Air National Guard, and I deployed for missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. For most of that time, I flew as a flight engineer on the C-130 Hercules and the C-5 Galaxy. I never faced anything as horrific as the air war over Europe during World War II, but I learned how a crew bonds and communicates.
Q: What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
Mainly, I hope readers find a page-turning war story that puts them in the cockpit of a B-17, on the bridge of a U-boat, and on the run from the SS. If I’ve done my job well, the story will bring history alive for readers and offer an emotional connection to the characters. I hope readers will gain some sense of what it might have been like for a young serviceman during World War II, forced by circumstance to face grave dangers and make gut-wrenching decisions.
Silver Wings, Iron Cross is now available for purchase. Visit Tom Young’s BookTrib author profile page.
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About Tom Young:
Tom Young served in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Air National Guard. In all, Young logged nearly 5,000 hours as a flight engineer on the C-5 Galaxy and the C-130 Hercules while flying to almost forty countries. Military honors include the Meritorious Service Medal, three Air Medals, three Aerial Achievement Medals and the Air Force Combat Action Medal.
In civilian life he spent ten years as a writer and editor with the broadcast division of the Associated Press, and currently works as an airline pilot based at Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C. Young holds a B.A. and M.A. in Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He is a member of the National Press Club, the Air Force Association, the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Young serves as a vice commander of American Legion Post 20 in Washington, DC.
