Customer Reviews

STEEL TIGER

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Do you like a book that is able to take you to the front of a war and able to make you feel that your there with the characters? If you do, then you'll love STEEL TIGER by Mark Bernet. This book is able to put you in the cockpit of an F-4 and in the heat of battle in the air and on the ground. Mark Bernet is able to give you the feeling that you have known the characters,your their best freinds, and they are telling you the story as you sit and have a cold one. Court bannister is the main character and the most believable: he si a major in the air force serving our country in the Veitnam War. STEEL TIGER is a book about the special bonds that are fromed between pilots an d co-pilots in the air and on the ground. It teaches that if you don't trust the person you fly with, than its most likely that you may end up dead or a prison of war. It portrays that the war is about people, those on both sides,(good or bad) and the stories that they can tell you. It shows that even though you have to fight the other side that they are not all bad people. The book was well writen and full of exiting dog fights and bar room fights that make you feel like you are in the air force and with the men of the Veitnam War.

More than mere paperbacks novels, reliving of a painful though now fabulously nostalgic era. A tale of good men in a bad war, I think i saw someplace,or on the review comments on back jacket, to be honest I didnt expect as fine a read as I ended up with from both 'Rolling Thunder' and 'Steel Tiger, having bought the second at a Sunday market 2nd hand for a song, I soon realized I had 'discovered' Mr Berent, who is a decorated USAF Vietnam pilot, someone who flew F4 MiG CAP over Hanoi, for those who know what that means. Mr Berent weaves fictional characters like gifted pilots but troubled souls Bannister and Parker, Special Forces rough-n-tough 'Wolf Lochert', who calls people 'ScheissKoph' for those with high-school German, but will punch your lights out for taking the Lords name in vain, and senior Pentagon AF-command types like 'Whitey' Whisenand, into the fabric and knit of a tale and an atmosphere with real characters such as Lyndon Johnson, Robert Strange McNamara ( an auto company civilian president who was placed in charge of Americas forces and war, echos of Mr Rumsfeld) and real-life Vietnam Airforce ace Robin Olds.Many chapters begin with a tom Clancy style geo-political or techical background preface, and like Mr Clancys chapters this really works, the depth of research, as well as the reminisce. The tale rollocks along, through triumph and tragedy, with a Vietnamese double-agent among Locherts special forces cadre, and Berent is able to take you in wind-whistling ride through Bannister and Parkers air combat missions, with loads but not too much technical explanation of jet-fighters, weapons and dogfights, and why not, Mr Berent went there and did it himself, with a silver-star and DFC in recognition.
I am a fan of Mr Berents Vietnam air-war series, his characters and his writing of this Hendrix/Animals/Byrds war and era, I wound-up sending to Amazons 'Fiction Addiction' bookshop in SC to get 'Phantom Leader' and 'Storm Flight', the remainder of a 5-part trilogy? and which were hard to obtain in Australia. I commend that store and what I bought.If you like a comparable writing style with Clancy, you like credible though exciting fictional characters combining with a historical President Johnson deciding war strategy as he sits on bathroom ceramic furniture, and if you are fascinated by the halcyon events and atmosphere of Americas most divisive and lamented war, youll like Berents long punctuated saga.

Top notch wwriter keep you on the edge of your seat, Keep up the good work, also very good service on my order of the book , Thank You.

After reading Mark Berent's "Rolling Thunder", I was eager to read "Steel Tiger', the second in his series of five books about the Vietnam war. I found the book to live up to the standards of authenticity and realism set by Berent in his first book.

I was pleased to find the main characters in the first book were back in Vietnam for a second tour. Although "Steel Tiger" was written to stand alone for a reader who had not read "Rolling Thunder", I recommend that the serious reader of Berent's Vietnam books start with the first book and proceed in chronological order through his series of books. The reader will see how the experiences of the Vietnam war changed the characters as they served a second combat tour.

While "Rolling Thunder" focused on air-to-ground strikes by the aging F-100, "Steel Tiger" covers the air-to-air warfare between American pilot Court Bannister in his F-4 Phantom and Russian pilot Vladimir Chirnov in his MIG-21. Bannister tries to make Ace, while Chirnov attempts to teach the North Vietnam pilots how to fly air-to-air combat. The descriptions of the air-to-air combat were so realistic and in such detail that I could clearly envision every move that the planes went through.

Berent's coverage of the politics of the war was excellent as he described how the President picked the targets and, consequently, tied the fighter pilots hands so they could not efficiently fight the war. The book is a must-read for people who are interested in how Air Force fighter pilots prosecuted the war in Vietnam despite those political restrictions.

There is no way to read a nearly 500 page book on to three hours of tape. Lots left out. Avoid.