I'm also thinking about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, most famous for the deceptivey simple story "The Little Prince." He joined the French Air Force in 1921, having been too young to serve in WWI. He didn't serve for many years, but he retained a passion and a habit of flying small planes for the rest of his relatively short life.

He is, of course, the basis for "the pilot" in his most famous story, which many today regard as much a master work of existentialism as a diversion for children.

He wrote The Little Prince during WWII in the United States, to where he had fled after the fall of France. He later returned to France to fight in the war as a military pilot, where he lost his life in a crash.

For those who know him only for "The Little Prince," the stories he wrote based on his life running an aerial mail service in Argentina are very much worth reading.