F-4 PHANTOM

&lsquo,A stone cold classic. One of the best military aviaton memoirs ever written&rsquo, Rowland White, author of Vulcan 607&lsquo,I only have to think Speed, and I am at 600 knots in seconds. Think Height and I am gazing down from a eight-mile-high perch within one minute. Think Freedom and I am wrested away from a dank, cold world, cloudbase at 300 feet, through a brief shock of cloud to emerge into a golden blue world, another dimension, crystal clear for miles and miles&rsquo,Fighter Pilot. Robert Prest had never wanted to be anything else. And even as a boy he had set his sights on flying the awesome McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom. The big, twin-engined interceptor offered an irresistible combination of charisma, power and performance. Air combat, strike, gunnery, bombing and rocketry, the F-4 was jack-of-all-trades, master of most.From the lonely pursuit of Soviet intruders out over the North Sea and strength-sapping high-g dogfights, to maintaining Quick Reaction Alert on Germany&rsquo,s Eastern border, ready to scramble Battle Flight at a moment&rsquo,s notice, Prest and his fellow aviators stood toe-to-toe with a powerful opponent. But the defence of the West came at a cost, and comrades in arms would pay with their lives.No other book so vividly brings to life the high-pressure, high stakes, high-speed world of an RAF fighter pilot on the Cold War frontline. But it&rsquo,s more than that. In capturing a sense of the wonder and magic of flying, Prest&rsquo,s book ranks aviation classics from writers like Saint-Exupé,ry, Richard Bach, Cecil Lewis and Ernest Gann.&lsquo,The best book I&rsquo,ve ever read about flying fast jets for the Cold War RAF. Both thrilling and elegaic, F-4 Phantom makes poetry of complex, exacting world of the fighter pilot. This is as close as you&rsquo,ll ever get to flying the Phantom yourself.&rsquo,Rowland White, author of Vulcan 607&lsquo,What First Light does fo