I’m a fan Ward Carroll’s YouTube channel and try to never miss an episode.
This is the third Naval Aviation novel I’ve read recently. The others were Treason Flight and The Aviator Omnibus. I enjoy all three very much much, but I came away from all three with a real world concern.
I am a retired USAF WSO/EWO. The way Navy squadron life is depicted all is almost bizarre compared to my experience in Air Force squadrons.
Only once in 20 years did a Colonel actually yell at me about an unlocked office door that turned out to not be my fault. I screwed up plenty of times, and every senior officer who corrected me did so in a stern but rational way, usually concentrating on making sure I learned from my mistake. Only that one Colonel was a bit like Punk’s boss Soup.
In the real Navy is every officer regularly screaming at the sailors under him? Is the aviation staff in a real carrier as disorganized as that on Puke’s Carrier? Good grief, Puke’s above squadron leadership didn’t seem like they could find their rear ends with both hands! All three of these ‘modern Navy’ books had the same ‘Lord of the flies’ feel to them.
And it appears that the Navy does not have an Inspector General function.
OK, that part bothered me a bit.
But I really, really enjoyed this book, and am going straight into the next two in the series. All three of these books were technically super accurate, put Ward really hit it out of the park in how he describes flying the Tomcat. As a WSO/EWO (F-4G, F-111, EF-111) I really enjoyed the close crew coordination that these Tomcat guys (other than the Bad Guy) practiced.
There is an Air to Air engagement and real world SAR situation that were very accurately described. Unlike the prior two books, the Air Force actually exists in Puke’s War, as minor players but we were there. Ward gives some love to the KC-10 which I appreciated.
There is conversation between Punk and an Air Force F-117 pilot which was both very accurate and pretty funny. I’m sure Ward had this conversation in real life. I almost applauded when the F-117 pilot mentioned that the USAF couldn’t provide Electronic Warfare support because of ‘some stupid decision by some generals’. F-117 pilots were real fans of EW support and Ward’s Cockroach pilot was 100% accurate.
I can highly recommend this book to fans of accurate current military based fiction.