Air Warriors: The Inside Story of the Making of a Navy Pilot [Hardcover]

Douglas Waller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 1998

A thrilling, behind-the-scenes account of a remarkable group of male and female Navy Top Gun pilot trainees, whose stories provide an intimacy never captured in movies or on the television news.

Investigative journalist Doug Waller, who wrote The Commandos after observing the training of special forces soldiers, now chronicles the training of Top Gun pilots in Air Warriors. This time out, Waller provides even more exhilarating, you-are-there details -- because he was granted permission to actually participate in the pilots' grueling training program.

From his birds-eye view in the passenger seat, Waller follows each Top Gun trainee through two years of intense preparation, documenting aerial dog fights that leave the pilots reeling with nausea; stomach-swallowing dive-bombing runs; high-speed tactical maneuvers that graze the desert floor; and one heart-stopping landing and take-off after another.

Hurtling through the air at death-defying speeds, these pilots-in-training struggle to maintain their composure while surviving exercises that are designed to challenge them to the very limits of human endurance. In the tradition of George Plimpton, Waller offers a gripping and utterly extraordinary story that will inspire and amaze military readers -- or anyone who loves a heroic human interest story.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After much negotiating with top Navy brass, Waller (The Commandos), the national security correspondent for Time magazine, was granted permission to perform an amazing journalistic feat. In the process of researching his book on the training of Navy pilots, Waller was allowed to take part in the program. He endured disorientation exercises in which he was deprived of oxygen, or spun in circles at nausea-inducing speeds. He was blindfolded and dunked, upside down, into a water tank. As reward for having passed those grueling tests, he was permitted to ride in the cockpit of most of the training flights recounted in this thoroughly documented work. Waller resists the easy temptation of presenting a book centered on "my adventure with the Navy"; instead, he relies on his eyewitness experience, plus interviews with more than 200 aviators, to craft an in-depth profile of the Navy's aviation training program and its participants. Readers expecting to follow a core of main characters from start to finish may at first find the format disorienting. Waller offers quick takes on individual students, both male and female, going through a particular phase of pressure-cooker training, then moves on. But once readers catch on, they won't want to put down this engrossing saga that will likely become an unofficial recruiting tool for naval aviation. Throughout, the would-be aviators are revealed as supremely talented, courageous and intelligent young people. And by showing how individual aviators have been unfairly tarred by the Tailhook scandal, Waller offers a powerful argument that repercussions from the infamous sex-capade have gone too far. The Navy will love this exemplary book; but so will the vast corps of military supporters and adventure-lovers. Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Navy Wings of Gold do not come cheaply. In this fast-moving study of young men and women under stress, Time staff writer Waller takes us into the intricate and intense world of Navy flight training. From classrooms in Pensacola to the sweaty cockpits of training jets, from Florida skyways jammed with neophyte pilots to Southwestern desert training ranges, he follows the fortunes of a typical class of future Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard aviators. The author clearly belongs to the George Plimpton school of action-participant writing, enduring the nausea of air combat maneuvering and cramming the Navy's high-tech electronics before taking pen in hand. At bottom, though, this is really a "people" story based on scores of perceptive interviews with rookies and their patient instructors. Most telling is their incredible self-generated pressures to win assignment to fighter squadrons that fly the daunting F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets. This book follows Waller's similar study of US "special operations" training, Commandos (LJ 1/94). Recommended for public libraries.?Raymond L. Puffer, U.S. Air Force History Prog., Edwards AFB, CA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First edition (June 2, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684814307
• ISBN-13: 978-0684814308
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #689,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #97 in Books > Law > Specialties > Military

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific!, October 30, 2002

By 

Eric C. Welch (Illinois) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Air Warriors: The Inside Story of the Making of a Navy Pilot (Mass Market Paperback)

Talk about your Walter Mittys. Waller has a heck of a deal going here. He has written books about commandoes, submariners and now navy pilots. As a writer for first Newsweek and now Time, it's no wonder he got to fly with the boys and girls in the back seat of F-18s and dive in nuclear subs. OK, so maybe I'm just a teensy-weensy bit jealous. Waller, who wrote The Commandos after observing the training of special forces soldiers, reports on his intimate experience with the training program for navy pilots in this latest book. He was granted permission to participate in the pilots' grueling training regime in order to produce this absorbing behind-the-scenes account of the physical, academic and psychological tests endured by pilot wannabees. It's almost as good as being there as Waller takes us through the grueling "Helo-Dunk" test where students are dumped in a pool in a helicopter body. Because helicopters are top-heavy, they flip immediately when forced to ditch in the ocean, and the navy discovered that if pilots were prepared for the fear and darkness they had a much better survival rate - of course, almost anything was better than the close to zero survivor rate they had had before. Students wear blindfolds and lose points if they try to shove anyone out of the way in their haste to make the exits.

Grading of all their tests is excruciating. Everything is graded on a curve that is generated against their fellow students to compute the average. "Students were graded not on how well they did, but rather on how well they did compared to other students. The numerical scores a student made on each test were totaled up, divided by 1,000, then plotted on a bell curve against the scores of the past 300 students who took the test. Competition between recruits is thus intense and just one bad day can ruin a recruit's chances. The difference between the trainee who was number one in one of the classes and the trainee who was number fifty in class rank was a mere two points."

Air combat is vastly different than it was just thirty years ago. Today everything is done at vast distances, and the rule is that if a pilot hasn't eliminated the enemy plane within sixty seconds, he should run away because his odds of survival fall drastically. The systems on an F-18 require the sensitivity of a piano player, and landing on an aircraft carrier at night - read the chapter "Practice Bleeding" for a very realistic account of the fear and skill involved - commands minute movements of the hands and eyes to constantly detect changes in altitude, angle of attack, and speed. For the first landing on a carrier, there is no instructor in the back seat. It's "too nerve-wracking. The instructor would be too tempted to grab the controls and pilot the aircraft himself." It is just too dangerous. The students have to concentrate so hard on what they are doing that many forget their names and plane numbers.

Despite the dangers, the navy has drastically reduced the number of accidents by emphasizing safety. Hot-rod pilots get thrown out immediately for stupid stunts. Nevertheless, the most extreme strains can come from stress on family relationships when the pilots are gone at sea for long periods. Two of the students Waller followed were married to each other. Both became F-18 pilots, but navy regulations prevented them from being assigned to the same squadron, so they would be lucky to see each other for more than six months every twenty-four. Waller also discusses the changes in the navy after Tailhook. The older sailors hate what they consider the PC mentality while the younger ones seem to have adjusted well, but it has made dating in bars really difficult because of the ban on officer-enlisted personnel fraternization. Unless in uniform, many officers won't go near an on-base, mixed enlisted/officer club for fear of asking out an enlisted woman and risky severe censure.

This is a really stunning book. Absolutely fascinating.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars offers a keen insight minus the bluster of the egos, July 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Air Warriors: The Inside Story of the Making of a Navy Pilot (Mass Market Paperback)

Found the book provided a keen insight into the mindset and fears that the men and women who want to fly jets go through. So many times we hear about fighter pilots being egotistical but this showed the underlying feelings of studying, qualifying and carrier landings. With the details provided on what is involved with flying these high tech machines, it is easy to feel the stress that exudes from this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Essential Reading for Future Naval Aviators, July 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Air Warriors: The Inside Story of the Making of a Navy Pilot (Hardcover)

As a former US Navy attack pilot (A-6), I strongly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Naval aviation. Contrary to popular fiction (fueled by recruiting propaganda, of course), the job and lifestyle of the Navy aviator is not best described in what you see in Top Gun or on the Discovery channel.

The Fly Navy experience as much about failure, visceral fear, and emotional ambiguity as it is about Maverick getting laid and bending around at the speed of sound. I am particluarly impressed at how skillfully the author captured the gut-wrenching grind that the attrition (errr training) program is all about.

This book gets 5 stars in its category and 3 stars for general literary merit. For those interested in this genre, I also recommend "Iron Claw", written by an actual EA-6 aviator.