The Eye Of The Viper: The Making Of An F-16 Pilot

Hand-picked pressure-tested and full of astronaut gung ho the young pilots of Eye of the Viper are poised for the toughest assignment of their the exhaustive six-month training course at Arizonas Luke Air Force Base at a cost of $2 million each. Luke the worlds largest fighter wing is the only F-16 fighter training base in the United States and each year it produces one thousand pilots who will fly the F-16 from Korea to Afghanistan to Iraq.But being among the elite pilots who are selected for the course is by no means a guarantee that they will earn the right to fly the F-16 perhaps the most agile jet fighter ever sent into combat. Only a few select individuals will have what it takes.Award-winning journalist Peter Aleshire given unprecedented access to the pilots and teachers at Luke provides a full blast of the rigors and intensity of the course--the personalities the incredible machines the irreverence the bravado and the toughness not only of the hand-picked students seeking a place in the warrior subculture but of the veteran pilots who must teach them how to stay alive.Readers will quickly come to understand the extraordinary mental and physical demands on a modern pilot--and the incredible joy and sense of freedom that makes most F-16 pilots describe their single-engine weapons-laden needle-nosed jet in terms that sound more like true love or helpless addiction than a relationship with a mere airplane.Eye of the Viper is a frank ambitious eminently entertaining look at the ambitions fears frailties and courage that make or break the young pilots at the exquisitely sensitive controls of a $35-million jet.