- Paperback: 312 pages
- Publisher: The Lyons Press; New edition edition (1 Dec 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1592288227
- ISBN-13: 978-1592288229
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 16.5 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,093,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Eye of the Viper: The Making of an F-16 Pilot
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Product Description
Synopsis
Hand-picked, pressure-tested, and full of astronaut gung ho, the young pilots of "Eye of the Viper" are poised for the toughest assignment of their career: the exhaustive six month training course at Arizona's Luke Air Force Base, at a cost of $2 million each. Luke, the world's largest fighter wing, is the only F-16 fighter training base in the United States, and each year it produces one thousand pilots who will fly the F-16 from Korea to Afghanistan to Iraq. But being among the elite pilots who are selected for the course is by no means a guarantee that they will earn the right to fly the F-16. Only a few select individuals will have what it takes. Award-winning journalist Peter Aleshire provides a full blast of the rigors and intensity of the course - the personalities, the incredible machines, the irreverence, the bravado, and the toughness, not only of the hand-picked students seeking a place in the warrior subculture, but of the veteran pilots who must teach them how to stay alive.
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First Sentence
JUST LIKE DOUGHBOY, CHRIS PERKINS spent his whole life dreaming about being a fighter pilot. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
JUST LIKE DOUGHBOY, CHRIS PERKINS spent his whole life dreaming about being a fighter pilot. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Unfortunately, I must start my review by admiting I didn't finish this book. It never grabed me and once I put it down I didn't want to pick it up again. The main problem for me was it seemed to be a series of extracts from interviews with pilots in the process of training or being trained. Thus what one gets is lots of people telling you how what they are doing/do/have done is the best/hardest/fastest/toughest/most challenging thing ever.
Without interpretation or being placed in context by the author this becomes boring pretty quick. There are no technical details or descriptions of what a viper pilot does during training or what the skills are they must develop. Even more strangely, for a book about the F16 I can't recal it telling me anything much about the plane itself.
Possibly if your looking to understand the psycological makeup of those who fly Vipers then maybe this is a good book. But if you want to know more about jet pilot training, then there are many far more interesting books waiting to be read.
Without interpretation or being placed in context by the author this becomes boring pretty quick. There are no technical details or descriptions of what a viper pilot does during training or what the skills are they must develop. Even more strangely, for a book about the F16 I can't recal it telling me anything much about the plane itself.
Possibly if your looking to understand the psycological makeup of those who fly Vipers then maybe this is a good book. But if you want to know more about jet pilot training, then there are many far more interesting books waiting to be read.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
16 reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Overall, a good book.
25 Oct 2005
Format:Hardcover
From reading the reviews already here, it looks as if there is a rift between the readers. Hopefully I can clear some of the confusion up.
I am not a fighter pilot and have never been in a fighter jet. Like most guys, I think they are extremely cool. One of my most vivid memories of being a child was seeing an F-15 demonstration at the Keesler Air Force Base open house in about 1978. I will never forget the shock of seeing a huge chunk of metal stand on end what seemed like a few feet above the runway, hit the afterburners, and disappear into the sky. So although I am not a fighter jock, I do admire the machines and the people who fly them.
This book was, overall, pretty good. The writing was decent and it covered some of the technical aspects of flight in a way that the average reader could understand them at some basic level. What this book was not:
1. A technically detailed (i.e. Tom Clancy) showcase for F-16s
2. A minute by minute account of training.
3. A full picture of fighter pilots or their training.
I can understand Mr. Quattlebaum's disappointment with this book. But you have to understand that a writer can only do so much and still have broad appeal to non-fighter pilot types. It would be this way with any highly skilled or technical profession. Whether you are a stock broker, brain surgeon, computer programmer, or hacker, a book that the average person will pick up and read (and more importantly, pay for) is not going to do you justice. I would suggest that Mr. Quattlebaum write his own book on the true F-16 pilot training experience. Yes, I would buy that one too...so you have one sure sale and I suspect that many, many people would be interested in this topic from a trainer's point of view!
The book lightly follows a group of F-16 pilot trainees through training at Luke AFB. Right up front the author acknowledges that because of a variety of writing, editing, and marketing constraints he was not able to produce the book he really wanted to. He also admitted that the story lines may be skewed, compressed, rearranged and otherwise tweaked to make the book readable and not be too long for casual reading. It is the nature of the business. That said, I think he did a very good job at giving the reader a taste of what the pilots are expected to do, the pressure that is on them to get it right, and the concerns that the trainers have during the process.
I do agree that for my personal taste, a little too much space was given to the various "entertainment" aspects such as the parties. I don't think that detracted from the book but I think it shoved out room for some of the more play by play flight action which I would have found more satisfying.
After reading this book, I did not feel that I had a whole lot of knowledge about fighter training. It was more like the "Space Camp" version of the space program. You get a taste. A reader interested in the technical, tactical, and emotional aspects of being a fighter pilot will probably continue their reading with more in-depth books on the same subject.
Overall a decent book.
M@
I am not a fighter pilot and have never been in a fighter jet. Like most guys, I think they are extremely cool. One of my most vivid memories of being a child was seeing an F-15 demonstration at the Keesler Air Force Base open house in about 1978. I will never forget the shock of seeing a huge chunk of metal stand on end what seemed like a few feet above the runway, hit the afterburners, and disappear into the sky. So although I am not a fighter jock, I do admire the machines and the people who fly them.
This book was, overall, pretty good. The writing was decent and it covered some of the technical aspects of flight in a way that the average reader could understand them at some basic level. What this book was not:
1. A technically detailed (i.e. Tom Clancy) showcase for F-16s
2. A minute by minute account of training.
3. A full picture of fighter pilots or their training.
I can understand Mr. Quattlebaum's disappointment with this book. But you have to understand that a writer can only do so much and still have broad appeal to non-fighter pilot types. It would be this way with any highly skilled or technical profession. Whether you are a stock broker, brain surgeon, computer programmer, or hacker, a book that the average person will pick up and read (and more importantly, pay for) is not going to do you justice. I would suggest that Mr. Quattlebaum write his own book on the true F-16 pilot training experience. Yes, I would buy that one too...so you have one sure sale and I suspect that many, many people would be interested in this topic from a trainer's point of view!
The book lightly follows a group of F-16 pilot trainees through training at Luke AFB. Right up front the author acknowledges that because of a variety of writing, editing, and marketing constraints he was not able to produce the book he really wanted to. He also admitted that the story lines may be skewed, compressed, rearranged and otherwise tweaked to make the book readable and not be too long for casual reading. It is the nature of the business. That said, I think he did a very good job at giving the reader a taste of what the pilots are expected to do, the pressure that is on them to get it right, and the concerns that the trainers have during the process.
I do agree that for my personal taste, a little too much space was given to the various "entertainment" aspects such as the parties. I don't think that detracted from the book but I think it shoved out room for some of the more play by play flight action which I would have found more satisfying.
After reading this book, I did not feel that I had a whole lot of knowledge about fighter training. It was more like the "Space Camp" version of the space program. You get a taste. A reader interested in the technical, tactical, and emotional aspects of being a fighter pilot will probably continue their reading with more in-depth books on the same subject.
Overall a decent book.
M@
16 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Top Notch
3 Oct 2004
Format:Hardcover
I'm currently a Viper pilot and I think this book was awesome. Sure there are some inaccuracies, but Mr. Aleshire did a good job overall capturing the feelings and the attitude of a young fighter pilot.
Capt Quattlebaum: just because you don't know there is a rift in your class doesn't mean it isn't there. My class had a contentious assignment process and guess what - hard feelings were there until the day we graduated.
Yes, being an F-16 pilot is about hard work and dedication, but it's a damn good time, too.
Capt Quattlebaum: just because you don't know there is a rift in your class doesn't mean it isn't there. My class had a contentious assignment process and guess what - hard feelings were there until the day we graduated.
Yes, being an F-16 pilot is about hard work and dedication, but it's a damn good time, too.
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Fun, quick read about fighter pilot training!
8 Dec 2004
Format:Hardcover
I love all fighter pilot books, and this one is good (my all-time favorite is still Bogeys and Bandits). The author describes about 5 new pilots in training and about 5 of their flight instructors at an Air Force base in Arizona. The book just came out, so the stories are current. There's the surfer dude pilot, the rare woman pilot, the yes-sir/no-sir military guy pilot and so on. The author spends most of his time describing their actual flights as they learn how to fly the Viper (F-16) so you get a good feel for their mistakes and the difficulty in learning all the complexities of not only flying the jet but using it's missiles and bombs. The author is plenty gung-ho about the fighter pilot world - describing them as "ball-busting badasses" on the 1st page. I don't think the previous 1-star reviews by a pilot and the pilot's wife who think the author dissed him in the book are relevent to the book's actual goodness or badness - most people who read this book will enjoy it.
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