I read something about this in a quite unexpected place: H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald:
> A few years ago I met a retired U2 pilot ... as I talked with this man what impressed me the most weren't his deadpan tales of high adventure, the 'incidents' with Russian MiGs and so on, but his battle against boredom. The nine-hour solo missions. The twelve-hour solo missions. 'Wasn't that horrendous?', I asked. 'It could get a little lonely up there,' he replied. But there was something about how he said it that made it sound a state still longed-for. And then he said something else. 'I used to read,' he said, unexpectedly, and with that his face changed, and his voice too: his deadpan Yeager drawl slipped, was replaced with a shy, childlike enthusiasm. 'The Once and Future King. By T.H.White,' he said. 'Have you heard of him? He's an English writer. It's a great book. I used to take that up, read it on the way out and on the way back.' [pp31-2]
> A few years ago I met a retired U2 pilot ... as I talked with this man what impressed me the most weren't his deadpan tales of high adventure, the 'incidents' with Russian MiGs and so on, but his battle against boredom. The nine-hour solo missions. The twelve-hour solo missions. 'Wasn't that horrendous?', I asked. 'It could get a little lonely up there,' he replied. But there was something about how he said it that made it sound a state still longed-for. And then he said something else. 'I used to read,' he said, unexpectedly, and with that his face changed, and his voice too: his deadpan Yeager drawl slipped, was replaced with a shy, childlike enthusiasm. 'The Once and Future King. By T.H.White,' he said. 'Have you heard of him? He's an English writer. It's a great book. I used to take that up, read it on the way out and on the way back.' [pp31-2]