FIGHTER WING [Hardcover]

Tom clancy (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Berkley Books (1993)
• ASIN: B000RATVVM
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,310,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Accurate account of a top Air Force Base and its mission., October 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Airforce Combat Wing (Tom Clancy's Military Referenc) (Mass Market Paperback)

Mr. Clancy is right on when it comes to writing about the military, I only wish I had as many powerful allies in the military. His ability to capture both the science of flight and the thrill of getting aboard a F-15E Eagle and hitting the target range is excellent! He uses descriptions of how air power made it possible to swiftly win the war over Iraq, and incorporates inverviews with key commanders from that conflict!

One piece of advice, I too hope that someday the Republic of Vietnam decides that communism isn't for them and revolts, but that type of fiction is better left for one of his action/thriller novels.

I am about to enter the USAF, and piced this book up to begin to familiarize me with the language and equipment the USAF uses to carry out its various missions. It certainly was the right choice.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Off we go into the wild blue with Clancy and Gresham...., September 29, 2003

By 

Alex Diaz-Granados "fardreaming writer" (Miami, FL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Airforce Combat Wing (Tom Clancy's Military Referenc) (Mass Market Paperback)

The third book in The Guided Tour series, Fighter Wing is a non-fiction book devoted to an Air Force Composite Wing. (Why it's called "Fighter Wing" escapes me, since the 366th Wing includes a wide range of combat aircraft!) Like the other books in this seven-volume series, Fighter Wing gives the readers a reasonably interesting look at the U.S. Air Force since its restructuring in the early 1990s. Here, for instance, is where I found out the Air Force had renamed its major commands; Strategic Air Command (which controlled the bombers, particularly the B-1, B-2, FB-111, and B-52 aircraft) and Tactical Air Command (which controlled the smaller fighters and fighter-bombers) merged and became Air Combat Command.

The book discusses the theory and history of air power, the training of the men and women who fly for the Air Force, and, of course, the planes and weapons of a typical Composite Wing. As in most of the books in the Guided Tour series, photographs, graphics, an interview with a senior flag officer, and a fictional scenario depicting the combat roles of a Composite Wing are included.

The book is informative without getting too technical, and one comes away with a bit more inside information about how the modern Air Force works.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is Your United States Air Force, February 13, 2001

By 

Rottenberg's rotten book review (nyc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Airforce Combat Wing (Tom Clancy's Military Referenc) (Mass Market Paperback)

"Fighter Wing" as you can expect, offers a guided tour of a composite air wing, an air force combat unit compromising squadrons of mixed aircraft. With the end of the cold war, USAF brought together the once separate Strategic Air Command with the fighters and support planes of Tactical Air Command, creating a new Air Combat Command with a flexible range of assets in terms of equipment and manpower. New units now include both bombers like the B-1b and F-111 as well as fighters like the F-16. Clancy goes further than that, also surveying the essential technologies of military aviation (vectored-thrust, low-bypass engines; radar absorbsent material; reduced radar cross-section; smartbombs; etc..) from the basics to the cutting edge. While anybody could have put this package togther, I doubt that they could have done as good a job as Clancy who never loses touch with the fact that he's not a fighter pilot or even any military material himself, and always knwos just how to get across to the reader. It's sort of like a textbook you don't mind reading. The survey concludes in a hypothetical airwar set in (or over) Viet Nam. (Guess who wins...)