Customer Reviews

Punk's Wing

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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

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.

In this sequel to "Punk's War," author Ward Carroll takes the reader into the world of the modern naval aviator. The pilots it describes come form the generation that grew up watching Tom Cruise "feeling the need for speed," only to discover that U.S. Navy pilots fight some of their most difficult battles when they're NOT in the cockpit. Carroll's three novels (Punk's War, Punk's Wing, and Punk's Fight) are must-reads for anyone who wants to know what the military pilot's world is truly like.

(NOTE: a previous reviewer fabricated a list of errors that either do not occur in the book or are greatly exaggerated. Carroll knows his stuff.)

I enjoyed reading both of Mr Carroll's books. If you are looking for a easy, fictional read about Naval Aviation, this it it. What I really enjoyed is the behind the scenes action going on that Mr Carroll described, the backstabbing, trash talking that does go on in today's military. Don't get me wrong, the whole book is not about that, but he does not hold back. I have almost 17 years of active duty in the Marines, and I enjoy reading fictional acounts of what I am not allowed to say in public. This book may not be technically acurate, but so what! You want technically accurate, read a manual! You want a good read that you can't put down, this is it!! I am no expert on naval aviation, I just know a good book when I read one.

I've read all of Ward Carroll's books and find them remarkably accurate and the characters interesting and believable. While all of his characters are fictional, I find attributes of real people and characters I have served with in all of them. Of Carroll's many talents as a writer, I think one of his most extraordinary is his ability to create characters who are very real.

In all of his work, Carroll takes on or recreates stereotypes from his undergraduate institution, the U.S. Naval Academy, other (non F-14) aircraft communities, and from the Navy's intelligence and public affairs communities as well. He also offers every reader great leadership lessons through the 'bad' leadership of many of his senior leader characters, great lessons in officer-enlisted relationships, and just what it is like to be in an operational squadron.

Woven throughout Carroll's work is a great sense of humor, born out of too many tours at sea, and relationships with those from blue collar America who are really the backbone of the Naval Service. My favorite quote - "We're not gay, we're in the Navy!"

I consider all of Carroll's books a great read and I anxiously await the next!

Ward Carroll has written another spellbinder! All three of his "Punk's series are "must reads" for any serious student of carrier operations and naval aviation. Mr. Carroll's descriptions are very good and his plots make it difficult to put down one of his (now four) "Punk's" books.

Thomas J. Recktenwalt

Former U.S. Navy Carrier sailor

Dayton, Ohio

Ward Carroll nailed it again! Great story of the true world of the military aviator--struggling to balance the flying he loves with the other 'distractions' he faces. Well narrated with a 'there I was' feel, Mr. Carroll puts you in the cockpit as he deals with both the trivial and the deadly. Well done!

I hate it when a good book is littered with inaccuracies that the author shouldn't have made in the first place and the editor certainly should have caught. Such was the case with Carroll's first book, "Punk's War," and sadly, continues in "Punk's Wing." Examples:

Pg. 19. Sandy's last name is "Koufax," not "Kofax."
Pg. 43. "Master Chief Aviation Technician (Air Warfare) Bobby Callaghan." No such enlisted rating. Perhaps he meant "Master Chief Avionics Technician."
Pg. 114. NATOPS is defined here as "Naval Aviation Training and Operations publication." It should read "Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization." This from a RIO?
Pg. 127. There is no enlisted rating "Avionics Electronics Technician." It is "Aviation Electronics Technician."
Pg. 257. Pilot engages the four wire, but Carroll has LSO dictating, "Three wire." No explanation.
Pg. 335. Reference is made to "Operation Enduring Freedom" beginning a few days after 9/11. The operation's original name was, "Infinite Justice." The name change came quite a while after 9/11.

This book would have worked better without the 9/11 connection. The story of Navy students going straight from training to combat has already been told in "Top Gun" and "G.I. Jane." It didn't need to be repeated here again. And as much as I love the character Punk Reichert, I hope Carroll doesn't follow the lead of Stephen Coonts and Tom Clancy by elevating his protagonist to the top of his profession a few books from now. Leave Punk as a JO. Far more stories to tell at that level. That being said, I will buy and read the next one. These are still better than most carrier aviation fiction out there.