1993 historical aviation fiction. For a few months in 1916
Linienschiffsleutnant Otto Prohaska of the Austro-Hungarian Navy is a
heroic aviator.
The švejkárna, systematic military incompetence, is strong
here; perhaps too strong, with several supporting characters
essentially being reduced to stereotype. Have a detestable commander
by all means, it's part of the genre, but have him do at least one
thing that couldn't be summed up in a one-sentence character
description. Have a convert to German nationalism, but don't have him
spout specifically Nazi ideology and foretell the rise of a
Hitler-style figure in too-accurate detail; it makes it too obvious
that you're writing in the 1990s and not the 1910s.
This is also a very grim book, with occasional amusing moments but on
balance focusing on the grinding destructive pointlessness of war—with
a coda as Prohaska talks to a WWI aviation enthusiast many years
later. Prohaska gets assigned to the Italian front (oh, hello, Luigi
Cadorna),
arguably one of the worst fronts of the war, and even from a few
thousand metres up it's not much fun.
The book is good, but definitely takes a darker turn compared with the
earlier ones; it's not that the subject matter has changed, but there
are fewer amusing incidents and intervals in between the depressing
routine. (There are more flashes foward to Prohaska's career after the
War, though as I understand it the fourth and final volume of the
series deals with his days as a cadet.)