Book Review: Viper Force- 56th Fighter Wing- To Fly and Fight the F-16 by John Dibbs et al

Why, yes, yes I am an Eagle Bro-fan. But that doesn't mean I've never had a crush on another jet, or that I can't recognize great reading when it's on a book shelf. And let's face it- the F-16 makes great reading.

Viper Force presents itself deceptively under the guise of being an informative read on the 56th FW at Luke AFB, and a first glance seems to confirm that- the back cover has three long paragraphs talking about "numerous personal interviews". But it's not. Well, okay, it's got some actual information in it, in rich, personal commentary from Viper drivers, but most of it's from Viper drivers who graduated there and went on to war, and how the F-16 handled the war. And the stories rock. These are fighter pilots telling war stories the way only fighter pilots can tell them.

But of the almost 200 pages, there are, maybe... 20 such entries. That's right, I said TWENTY ENTRIES OUT OF 200 PAGES. That's Twenty short 2-3 paragraph text insertions about fighter pilot tales. No, it's not a lot. That's 1/10th of the book.

But after I'd gotten over my disappointment, I looked the book over a second time.

And it no longer mattered.

The photography of the F-16 in this book is rich to a point of being almost pornographic. Every block of F-16C is featured from avery angle and distance; cockpit, airbrakes, formation lights, afterburner takeoffs, afterburners at night, afterburners while dropping bombs, ACMI pods, Sniper pods, jamming pods, banking away, popping flares... I mean, it's got it all. And by all I mean EVERYTHING. This closeup shoes the structure-strengthening panels added the to jet's tail. Here's the bolts that hold the right cheek formation light on. Here's a close-up of the tracking number on a TER rack holding 3 Mk-83 bombs.

And there are no blurry stock photos here- every photo is unique to the book and in high, better-than-retinal-resolution sharpness. Well, except for the YF-16 shots, which are classic photos but their quality is still devoid of graininess or blurring.

When I put the book down (after taking it home) I felt like I'd just had an incentive flight in one.

Looking up, this book review may be a little embarrassing on my part, but I'll say it over and over again, this book is a must-have. You can't call yourself a Viper-fanboi until this book takes up shelf space in your library. You can't call yourself a fighter-pilot nut unless you've at least read it. In other words, get it:

Viper Force at Amazon.com