Fighter Pilot

Only a select few in today's RAF pass out to fly fast jets - the Tornado, Harrier, Jaguar, Buccaneer, Phantom or Lightning. Flying at up to 950 feet per second, sometimes less than 250 feet above the ground to avoid enemy radar, a fast-jet pilot must possess formidable flying skills. His training must therefore also be formidable - and it is his exacting three-year training schedule that Fighter Pilot follows.
The book is based on the major BBC television series of the same name, which was produced with the wholehearted co-operation of the RAF. From the first day - when hopeful candidates reported to the Officers and Aircrew Selection Centre at Biggin Hill - the BBC cameras followed one ever-diminishing band of student-pilots through Officer Cadet Training at Henlow; Basic Flying Training at Lintonon-Ouse; Advanced Flying Training at Valley; the Tactical Weapons Unit at Brawdy; and the Buccaneer Operational Conversion Unit at Honington, to life at the sharp end with an operational squadron in West Germany. Of the thirty-four young hopefuls, only one reached the end of the fast-jet stream - at a cost of over a million pounds to the taxpayer. Fighter Pilot is a portrait of million-pound pilots in the making.


by Colin Strong, and Duff Hart-Davis
Published by Queen Anne Press/BBC 1981 1st edition. 167pp illustrated, index. 18x25 inscription on front free endpaper, otherwise fine, inc. d/j.





Note:
"Long" descriptions, where shown, may have been taken from the book's dust jacket notes, and as such are relevant to the date of publication (e.g. any references to "new edition" "previously unpublished photographs" etc.) and not the present.

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