Punk's Wing [Mass Market Paperback]

Ward Carroll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 2003

Ward Carroll's electrifying debut, Punk's War, blew away readers, critics, and Navy veterans. Now, in his second novel, Carroll brings back Navy Lieutenant Rick "Punk" Reichert-with a training squadron of new pilots-on a collision course with danger and destiny.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This superb novel of contemporary naval aviation by former fighter pilot Carroll (Punk's War) finds Lieutenant Rick "Punk" Reichert training new pilots. One of his most memorable trainees is Lt. Evelyn Greenwood, who earns the call sign Muddy when she taxis an F-14 Tomcat off a runway. A powerful female senator has made it her mission to see that Muddy becomes one of the few women to complete the training, but the senator and her entourage of aides and journalists only succeed in giving Muddy and Punk a headache. Punk's troubles escalate when his best friend dies during a training accident and his engagement breaks up. Despite these somber goings on, Punk and his trainees keep the narrative lively with their frequent boozing, partying and wisecracking. On September 11th, however, the laughs subside and the action begins when Punk and his cohorts are shipped off to fly against the Taliban. Carroll's fictional account of the aerial attack will set readers' adrenaline and testosterone racing, and his depiction of Muddy's introduction to combat (and her subsequent discovery that she can do it) is a poignant touch. With the public's renewed focus on the men and women serving in the military, this top-flight tale should have widespread appeal.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Finally somebody got it right. (Stephen Coonts) For readers of military fiction who want some brains with their boom. (Baltimore Sun)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Signet (May 6, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451208773
• ISBN-13: 978-0451208774
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,157,020 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Feels real, a good read, May 28, 2003

By 

Bruce Irving "Flying Singer" (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Punk's Wing (Mass Market Paperback)

I read "Punk's War" a year or so ago and really enjoyed it, though it seemed to me that some of the senior officer characters were treated a bit too stereotypically (but maybe not - maybe there are less talented, showboating officers who become leaders in spite of the fact that they care only about their own careers - or maybe because of it - I hope not but I was never in the military so...).

This time the author has created characters that seem more real, with talents, flaws, fears, and doubts. Of the many military and techno-thriller novels I have read where "women in combat" is played up as a central conflict, I think this is the best. "Muddy" has problems becoming an F-14 pilot, and she gets special attention from a crusading senator, but her problems could happen to anyone, and special attention (which she doesn't even want) actually creates more problem. The personal, professional, and political worlds intersect in complex ways. Flying an airplane requires multi-tasking, as I learned in my own pilot training in slow-moving Cessna's. I admire anyone who can manage the learning curves and high intensity juggling acts required of military pilots. The training stuff in here is really good, not just filler before the combat scenes.

The combat scenes are good too, and they show that Afghanistan was no cakewalk for our carrier-based flyers. Missions with 3-5 aerial refuelings were the norm, and that stuff isn't easy even under the best conditions, which these were not.

A good book with excellent action and characters I could relate to as real people. There is a mystery through the book concerning an intermittent problem with flight controls that causes the accident that kills Punk's best friend. Punk suspects that the manufacturer and their representative are covering up known problems to avoid a profit-killing "recall", and the civilian rep is a pretty cartoonish character. But this is worked into the plot in a reasonable way and doesn't detract from the overall success of the book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ward Carroll - Fighter pilot - riveting author, December 20, 2003

By 

L. Boots McMacon "Boots" (Western, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Punk's Wing (Mass Market Paperback)

Reading a Carroll book is like being in the cockpit of a jet fighter - the pages race as you chase the action. His characters are fresh, but will remind veterans of the sea and air of people they've served with. It was the 'tongue in cheeks' comments that caught me and as I enjoyed the story, I was also searching for those tidbits from Navy life. You will discover yourself a Carroll fan, once you've read one of his books.
CAPT David E. Meadows, USN - author of Sixth Fleet series and Joint Task Force Liberia, & America
http://www.sixthfleet.com

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars maybe the greatest naval-aviation novel written, May 1, 2005

By 

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

This review is from: Punk's Wing (Mass Market Paperback)

This is probably the most powerful tome to come out of nav-air since "Flight of the Intruder" during the mid 1980's. "Wing" is actually the 2nd of three books - all worthy reads - but surpasses them all. "War" introduced Rick "Punk" Reichert, the pilot-half of a two-man crew dedicated to flying the F-14 fighter. Though it's an adventurous job, "War" set itself above other techno thrillers or mil-av novels by painfully depicting just how hard a job it really was to fly high-performance fighter jets from aircraft carriers. The Tomcats of the Punk novels are incredible airplanes - but they're also trouble-prone, and are light-years away from the high-tech dream machines of the Dale Brown books. More tellingly, the fliers who populate "Punk's War" and its sequels are nuanced, fallible and typically display more of a dramatic range than you'd expect from a single-page character dossier. In "War", Reichert flew Tomcats in the Iraqi skies between the two Gulf wars. In "Fight", Reichert will endure combat on the ground after he's forced to bail-out over Afghanistan in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.

In "Wing", Reichert has a more sedate job - a summer job as an F-14 instructor working on the shore. Though it's not as rigorous as sea-duty - with possible combat or the nightly horror of having to land on carriers in the dark - teaching raw cadets how to fly the F-14 proves to have its own hazards. Most of those deal with "Muddy" Waters - a woman whose advancement as a Tomcat driver has attracted politicians and politically minded naval officers. But Punk also has to contend with a mysterious problem plaguing F-14's - one that proves tragic in one case. Punk also has to deal with slippery defense contractors out to pin the F-14 problems on pilot error. But the biggest problem turns out to be a matter of timing: the blissful summer, we learn, is actually the summer of 2001. By the end of the novel, Punk will have left behind his cozy shore-side billet for the no-margin-for-error battlefront, and will have to rely on help from his untried trainees.

From cover to cover, "Punk's Wing" proves the best of the series, and perhaps one the best military aviation novels ever written. The characters are full-bodied, but author Carroll wisely restricts the novel's POV to Punk Reichert himself. Though the novel is chock full of the sort of highly arcane and technical details you'd normally find in a technothriller, Carroll uses them to drive his story demonstrate varying degrees of expertise among his aviators, unlike other authors who use excessive and typically irrelevant technical detail to cover up threadbare writing skills, characters and plots, and otherwise create a sense of realism that really isn't there. (Carroll gets some good shots at technothriller writers when he skewers the researcher for one in the aftermath of the WTC attacks.) Carroll also covers much ground - from basic airmanship in the F-14 to the horrors of night flying to the rigors of long-distance flight. Every military aviation author claims to make his readers feel like they're at the controls - but Punk delivers the goods.