Customer Reviews

The Wrong Stuff: Flying on the Edge of Disaster

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

John Moore does a masterful job of telling it like it is. His descriptions of life aboard ship as a fledgling Navy pilot, first combat butterflies, the realities of being a test pilot, personal tragedies and close calls draw the reader in for a close up, raw look at the life of a real pilot in a real world. No glamour here, only the stark reality of mistakes made (not necessarily by the author) and consequences suffered. Mr. Moore spices the book with a generous dose of humor guaranteed to make the reader laugh out loud. Certainly anyone who is or has been a test pilot, or those that aspire to be, or those with even a mild interest in aviation will appreciate and maybe even treasure this book. It is a book for everyone.

Cdr. John Moore tells it like it is (or was), back then when test flying was not as sophisticated as it is now, along with the trials of the line Carrier Pilot, during "The Korean Thing". An easy, can't-put-it-down read which had me up 'till 4 AM. It gives the reader a poignant, down-to-earth glimpse of life as he saw it and lived it, often on the edge.

... and many of them have honored places in my library: Colonel Robert Scott's "God Is My Co-Pilot", Heinz Knoke's excellent and sadly unknown "I Flew for the Führer", Bob Hoover's "Forever Flying", Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger's "Lost Moon" (which is as much an autobiography of Lovell as a recounting of the Apollo 13 incident)...

... and then there's this book. If you go into "The Wrong Stuff" expecting another self-congratulatory throttle-jockey memoir (not that there's anything wrong with those :), you'll be sorely disappointed, because John Moore isn't the self-congratulatory throttle-jockey type. He seems frankly surprised that he survived his aviation career, and his tongue-in-cheek delight at being alive permeates the work. Somehow, this man managed to wind up involved in some of the wackiest projects in aviation history, and his wry reminiscences make this the funniest flyboy book in history. I'm just amazed, with his karma, that Moore didn't end up testing the Pogo Planes.

Highly, highly, highly recommended.

A friend of mine has praised this book to the skies, so I bought a copy, expecting cover-to-cover laughs and revealations. Instead, what I got was a -very- disorganized, rambling series of partial recollections which were, despite the disclaimer in the introduction, the memoirs of a single pilot. Most of the stories failed to be funny in any way and were only moderately shocking.

Most irritating of all was Chapter Twelve, which dealt with the author's anger at the Tailhook scandal/witchhunt and which had absolutely, positively nothing at all to do with anything else in the book. The chapter didn't belong. It was a distraction. Had any editing been done on the book, it should have been deleted entirely.

There were some good parts, and the first two-thirds of the book would be quite nice with some serious re-arranging and reworking to present a coherent and orderly progression of events. The material about test-flying the Cutlass and the obscenely stupid FlexDeck program are must-reads, but the section on Apollo 1 adds nothing to the reams of material written about that tragedy, and the material on Mr. Moore's training runs hot and cold. As a minor note, the tendency to use technical terms without explaining them to the casual reader makes for difficult reading in some spots.

All in all, if I'd found this in a library first, I never would have bought it; now that I have it, I can't recommend it to others, but I won't be giving my copy away either.

Kris Overstreet

Even on the "edge of disaster" Cdr. John Moore never lost his sense of humor.
Especially when he had to jump over the side of the U.S.S. Essex, 60 feet to the water.
His exploits as a North American Aviation Test Pilot is accurate and exciting during the "fifties" when more new aircraft came on the scene than any time in our history.

Much more than just a wartime book about flying, this book is a very human description of the transition from piston and jet aircraft. Death is never far away in this book; both fellow aviators and his wife. A great read.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed this guy talking about his real-life experiences--surviving a crash on a carrier, surviving the Korean War, wheels-up landings on rubber mats--the whole magilla. But there were some parts which begged for description that wasn't there. For instance, he talks only briefly about the RA-5 Vigliante, but this was a real beast to fly, and he let it go. There was also a picture of the F11F Tiger, a beautiful jet that already looks like its going Mach 1 just sitting on the ground, but there isn't a word about it! Still, for the price it is a very good read and hard to put down.

This is an excellent book and should be required reading for anyone that loves aviation. Very interesting tales of time spent in combat and flight testing new aircraft for the Navy. Once you start reading, you won't want to lay the book down.

A great story of flying during the transition from the great piston powered aircraft of WW2 to the jet age.

Also a good reminder that the most dangerous words in aviation are often an engineer saying, " I have a great idea." For them the danger of the first flight is that they will choke on their coffee. Such was the case of one project to rid carrier aircraft of their landing gear and to have them land on a rubber "bed" . Somehow I get the feeling that the engineering team never spent any time at sea, certainly not on a dark stormy night.

While it lacks the polish and emotional content of Stranger To the Ground, it packs more of a flying punch. And the author also pulls no punches when it comes to the so called Tailhook incident for which senior naval aviators were punished for simply being at the same hotel. All in the name of political correctness.

Cdr. John Moore gives a unique insight into the life of a naval aviator of the 40's through the 60's. Certainly not an easy life but one filled with its share of challenges and danger. Pretentious in no way, John Moore tells it like it was. And there is the added insight into the life of a naval aviation test pilot. If you have ever tested a plane, or would like to, you can gain some insights from this book. After his naval aviation and test pilot career, Mr. Moore ran operations and testing for the Apollo program and later became mayor of Cocoa Beach (home of Ron Jon's Surf Shop). Not your typical man; not your typical book.