Ironclaw: A Navy Carrier Pilot's War Experience on the Uss Midway

by Baldwin, Sherman

• ISBN13: 9781450212588
• ISBN10: 1450212581
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-12-14
• Publisher: Author Solutions

Summary

"Fast-paced, exciting and informative, with a realism and authenticity that this old carrier aviator has not seen in a long, long time."-Admiral J. L. Holloway III, USN (Ret.), Chief of Naval Operations, 1974-78"A fine Tom Clancy-style account...From the start, the reader is in the cockpit."-Kirkus ReviewsThe book that straps you into the cockpit of one of the world's most exhilarating and dangerous occupations.Slammed back into his ejection seat, catapulting from the heaving aircraft-carrier at 150 miles per hour in two seconds, he plunges into the darkness above the black waves. He is a rookie pilot on his first flight off the deck of the famed USS Midway, a "nugget" strapped in the electronics-crammed cockpit of one of the world's most expensive, sophisticated - and powerful - military machines. He is a member of the elite EA-6B Prowler squadron - call sign Ironclaw. And for Sherman Baldwin, a Yale grad turned navy carrier pilot on the eve of the Gulf War, the adventure has just begun.Here is the real world of military aviation - a world far more exciting than the depiction in bestselling novels and popular Hollywood films. Baldwin records in white-knuckled prose what it's really like to make the grade as a navy carrier pilot: the high-stakes, high-pressure world of piloting multimillion-dollar aircraft, precision flying through enemy fire over hostile territory, and zero-tolerance aircraft landings in the dead of night, when one miscalculation could result in a fatal crash. He also offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at the humor and camaraderie that bind these special individuals together, characters with nicknames like "Beast," "Chief Rat," and "Simba." From the mission-planning room to chaotic action of the carrier deck to emergency midair refuelings and the outbreak of the Gulf War, Baldwin captures the G forces of the world's steepest and most dangerous learning curve.