Heaven Next Stop: A Luftwaffe Fighter Pilot at War (ISBN 0750920548)

I regret ever buying this "book'"!!!!:
simply put, the worst air combat narrative I've ever read. It lacks facts, it lacks characters,... enough! Even remembering its flaws to write this review makes me angry!!!

Memoir from one who was not an ace.:
What went on in the minds of those teen-agers and young men who took to their fighters and tried to stop the aerial juggernaught that was the eighth air force and the RAF? Translated to English in the fifties, "Heaven Next Stop" offers us a valuable insight. Thousands upon thousands of young German Luftwaffe pilots were shot down in their fighters on the Western front. Few survived the war, and even fewer of those were accomplished aces. "Heaven Next Stop" is the story of one of those faceless thousands of young men who made up the 90% of the German Fighter Force - men who rarely scored in combat, and had enough trouble just surviving their encounters with Allied aircraft. If you are looking for a detailed history about an "ace", full of pertinent unit and pilot data, this is not it. This is a young man's overall impressions on his wartime experiences, at times more concerned with his personal life and relationships with his friends than with statistics and his combat performance. Bloemertz despairs as his comrades disappear from the squadron almost daily, and his countrymen are obliterated in their cities; all victims of the constant grind of aerial combat at the hands of the ever-increasing Allied formations. If you've read your share of WW2 Pilot memoirs I think you'll find this book both interesting and refreshing, portraying almost a bystander's view of a front-line Luftwaffe unit on the Western Front.

Really faceless:
Yes, the Germans lost hundreds of faceless young fighter pilots in WW II, mainly in the final years (44/45). But I think Bloemertz must have been really "faceless", because he gave us absolutely no hint about where he was fighting, which unit he was fighting, who were his pals, NOTHING!!!! Some anonymous writer could have written this. I understand that this is kind of poetry, but it's a frustratingly poor reading. I do not recommend it to anyone!

I loved it !:
Wow tough crowd.I bought my copy off e bay for $20 ...got it yesterday in the mail and could not put it down.While it does not have a lot of technical info ,dates ,names etc I found it to be an exciting personal account of the final year of airwar over the Western front.I reccomend it to anyone interested in first person German Memoirs.

A good book, in spite of what others may say.:
I just finished this book, having borrowed it from my school library. I was pretty well annoyed at the resonses of some of the other, short-sighted reviews to be found here and felt compelled to tell you the truth. In short, this is a very good, honest book detailing the experiences of "another face in the croud", if you will. Bloemertz was a German fighter pilot who risked his life on a daily basis flying for what he believed in... the protection of his homeland. He was not an idealist by any means. He only did his best to try and stem the tide of bombers raining death and ruin upon his country. No, this book isn't the best written piece of literature... rather it reads like a diary. The words are true, heartfelt, and honest. Although some of the previous reviewers seem to expect every author to be Tolkien or Hemmingway, this book is very well written considering the fact that Bloemertz was an ordinary man trapped in extraordinary circumstances. I hope that you'll read it, lest the truth of human suffering be forgotten.