Night Flying Avenger, A Novel by Pete Grant

Length, 297 pages

This is an "autobiographical novel." The author made himself a character in this. It is his story of becoming a night torpedo pilot in the U.S. Navy in WWII. The first 10 chapters are about his joining up after Pearl Harbor and becoming a trained torpedo bomber pilot. He then gets to operate against U-boats when the U.S. came up with the idea of night flying from the "jeep carriers."
After one cruise in the Atlantic, he goes to an air group specifically trained for night ops, and operates from the carrier Saratoga. He takes part in the big Tokyo air strike in early 1945, and then supporting the Iwo Jima operation. It's then that the Saratoga gets hit by Kamikazes and takes many casualties and heavy damage. He goes back to the States and gets on another jeep carrier to finish out the war. He goes on to test, and nearly get killed in, the Ryan Fireball jet/prop hybrid fighter, and leaves the navy to marry his fiancee, a WAVE.
It's kind of routine in the beginning, which if you don't care for monotony, you'll want to skip to Chapter 11 to get to the action. He does describe the Saratoga ordeal in heartbreaking detail.