Written in 1979 by a former USN officer, it tells the story of fighter pilots Fred Trusteau and Jack Hardigan, battling the Japanese across the Pacific and coming to terms with their feelings for each other, and the equally hazardous undertaking of making a life together in postwar America.
Yeah, that's a spoiler. But I want to put it right up front that this is not a downer of a novel with the obligatory unhappy ending like most of the gay-themed novels of my youth. It's not a 100% happy ending (many reviewers have described it as "bittersweet") due to the realities of the time period. But the author doesn't betray his characters by having them breakup or kill themselves or sink into a seedy gay underworld because (as SO many novels of the time implied) that's just what the gays do, they can't be happy. He makes it clear that the problems they face are imposed by a homophobic society, not from their fundamentally flawed relationship.
Some readers may object to the depiction of sex (very low key, implied rather than explicit), the fact that they never say "I love you" or talk much about the relationship at all (in short, typical men of that time and pretty much any time). They might object to the fact that there's far more fighting than fucking and the lack of political consciousness. But this is a WAR novel, it's not a backdrop, it's what consumed nearly every America male for 5 years and defined that generation, as as a poltical novel, it's far more effective for NOT making its points with bullhorn.
What it us is:
A wartime love story every bit the equal of classics like For Whom the Bell Tolls and From Here to Eternity.
A totally realistic depiction of men at war, military life, and what it's like to be a military man in love with another in circumstances where acknowledging that live could get you disgraced, discharged and even imprisoned (and thus is my now firsthand experience btw).
One of the very few books that depicts love between men as enobling, righteous and even heroic, against a backdrop of fantastic scenes of aerial combat.
An all around portrait of life aboard a WW2 aircraft carrier, complete with all the great characters and humor you encounter in that type of situations. Every one of these characters rings true. Every one.
Maybe it's me, but I was relieved the author doesn't take them on a tour of the gay scene and give them a wise drag queen to dispense wisdom or a fag hag friend. It might have made the story "gayer" from a publisher's POV but wouldn't have rung true for these men.
M/M fiction gets bashed regularly around here, and books like this are one of the reasons: those of us who've read it know what that kind of story can be in the hands of a master storyteller whose painstaking research and insider knowledge shows on every page. Once you've read Wingmen, the cheap substitutes just show for what they are.
I read it for the first time 30 years ago, and it's stayed with me ever since.
