Eye of the Viper: The Making of an F-16 Pilot [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by Peter Aleshire (Author) "JUST LIKE DOUGHBOY, CHRIS PERKINS spent his whole life dreaming about being a fighter pilot..." (more)
Key Phrases: busted ride, unidentified jets, basic pilot training, Old Man, Gulf War, Red Air (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

". . . allows readers to experience the fascination and the fear of being an F-16 fighter pilot."--Publisher's Weekly

"The historian and investigative reporter takes readers into the elite world of the F-16 fighter pilot, illuminating the rigorous six-month training process that prepares a select group of young people to fly this sophisticated aircraft." --Forecast

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description
Every year, 1,000 fresh potential pilots undergo the intensive, six-month, 58-flight, $2 million-a-head fighter pilot basic training, where they are pushed to the extreme limits, propelled by the desire to earn their place in a warrior subculture. From the investigative
science and medical writer, Peter A. Aleshire, comes Eye of the Viper, an intriguing book about the making of an F-16 fighter pilot.

Blending intense human drama with a wealth of information about the world's most expensive, deadly, high-tech Air Force, the book follows a batch of fresh new recruits at Luke Air Force Base, the world's largest fighter wing and the single most important source of fighter pilots that have made the American Air Force virtually unchallenged in the skies, as they experience the exhaustive six-month training process. Get an insider's look at how these rookies face mental and physical demands, exhilaration and failure, joy and pain, sweat and tears while they are transformed into stealthy, fierce, American fighting machines. Each recruit is eager to climb into the jets they love at a moment's notice and fly halfway around the world to drop laser-guided bombs down any smokestack the president specifies. However, only a few select individuals have what it takes to be dubbed "protectors of national security." The stakes are high and only a few will succeed.



Historian and writer Peter Aleshire is a senior lecturer in the Department
of American Studies at Arizona State University West. He is contributing
editor at Phoenix Magazine and writes frequently for a variety of
magazines. He has written four history books about the Apache Wars in the
Southwest, including The Fox and the Whirlwind, Reaping the Whirlwind,
Warrior Woman, and Cochise. He spent 18 years as a science, medical and
investigative reporter at various newspapers before taking up teaching,
freelancing and writing in 1991. He has published hundreds of articles in
national and regional magazines, which have won numerous awards.


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Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: The Lyons Press; 1st edition (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592282601
• ISBN-13: 978-1592282609
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #813,196 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Overall, a good book., October 25, 2005

By	M@ "M@" (Mississippi) - See all my reviews

From reading the reviews already here, it looks as if there is a rift between the readers. Hopefully I can clear some of the confusion up.

I am not a fighter pilot and have never been in a fighter jet. Like most guys, I think they are extremely cool. One of my most vivid memories of being a child was seeing an F-15 demonstration at the Keesler Air Force Base open house in about 1978. I will never forget the shock of seeing a huge chunk of metal stand on end what seemed like a few feet above the runway, hit the afterburners, and disappear into the sky. So although I am not a fighter jock, I do admire the machines and the people who fly them.

This book was, overall, pretty good. The writing was decent and it covered some of the technical aspects of flight in a way that the average reader could understand them at some basic level. What this book was not:

1. A technically detailed (i.e. Tom Clancy) showcase for F-16s
2. A minute by minute account of training.
3. A full picture of fighter pilots or their training.

I can understand Mr. Quattlebaum's disappointment with this book. But you have to understand that a writer can only do so much and still have broad appeal to non-fighter pilot types. It would be this way with any highly skilled or technical profession. Whether you are a stock broker, brain surgeon, computer programmer, or hacker, a book that the average person will pick up and read (and more importantly, pay for) is not going to do you justice. I would suggest that Mr. Quattlebaum write his own book on the true F-16 pilot training experience. Yes, I would buy that one too...so you have one sure sale and I suspect that many, many people would be interested in this topic from a trainer's point of view!

The book lightly follows a group of F-16 pilot trainees through training at Luke AFB. Right up front the author acknowledges that because of a variety of writing, editing, and marketing constraints he was not able to produce the book he really wanted to. He also admitted that the story lines may be skewed, compressed, rearranged and otherwise tweaked to make the book readable and not be too long for casual reading. It is the nature of the business. That said, I think he did a very good job at giving the reader a taste of what the pilots are expected to do, the pressure that is on them to get it right, and the concerns that the trainers have during the process.

I do agree that for my personal taste, a little too much space was given to the various "entertainment" aspects such as the parties. I don't think that detracted from the book but I think it shoved out room for some of the more play by play flight action which I would have found more satisfying.

After reading this book, I did not feel that I had a whole lot of knowledge about fighter training. It was more like the "Space Camp" version of the space program. You get a taste. A reader interested in the technical, tactical, and emotional aspects of being a fighter pilot will probably continue their reading with more in-depth books on the same subject.

Overall a decent book.

M@

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top Notch, October 2, 2004

By	B. Price "Samurai Wood!" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm currently a Viper pilot and I think this book was awesome. Sure there are some inaccuracies, but Mr. Aleshire did a good job overall capturing the feelings and the attitude of a young fighter pilot.

Capt Quattlebaum: just because you don't know there is a rift in your class doesn't mean it isn't there. My class had a contentious assignment process and guess what - hard feelings were there until the day we graduated.

Yes, being an F-16 pilot is about hard work and dedication, but it's a damn good time, too.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun, quick read about fighter pilot training!, December 8, 2004

By	Hello Kitty Ellen (Appleton, WI) - See all my reviews

I love all fighter pilot books, and this one is good (my all-time favorite is still Bogeys and Bandits). The author describes about 5 new pilots in training and about 5 of their flight instructors at an Air Force base in Arizona. The book just came out, so the stories are current. There's the surfer dude pilot, the rare woman pilot, the yes-sir/no-sir military guy pilot and so on. The author spends most of his time describing their actual flights as they learn how to fly the Viper (F-16) so you get a good feel for their mistakes and the difficulty in learning all the complexities of not only flying the jet but using it's missiles and bombs. The author is plenty gung-ho about the fighter pilot world - describing them as "ball-busting badasses" on the 1st page. I don't think the previous 1-star reviews by a pilot and the pilot's wife who think the author dissed him in the book are relevent to the book's actual goodness or badness - most people who read this book will enjoy it.