Synopses & Reviews
From global confrontation at the start of the Cold War, to policing the skies over Iraq and Bosnia,
Splash One tells the story of aerial combat in the jet age. It puts the reader in the cockpit of the most beautiful, advanced and lethal aircraft of their day, in some of the classic battles for air superiority of the last fifty years.
From "MiG Alley" in the Korean War, where outnumbered USAF fighter pilots took on huge communist air forces, to "Thud Ridge" in Vietnam, where they had to outfly SA-2 missiles, Splash One traces the hard lessons which led to the establishment of the now legendary Top Gun school of air combat. From the opening strikes by Israeli Air Force pilots in the Six Day War,
through the "Electronic Summer" of 1970, to final victory in the Yom Kippur War, it charts the revolution in air power brought about by computers and guided missiles.
Splash One takes the reality of these wars, and the victories by the US Navy in the Gulf of Sirte, by the Royal Navy and the RAF in the Falklands, by the IAF in the battle for the Bekaa Valley and by the US/Coalition in the Gulf War, to illustrate the starkly different cultures of the NATO and Soviet bloc air forces. It tells how the western view, with its emphasis both on the traditional fighter pilot values of individual initiative, competitiveness and aggression, and on the value of quality over quantity in both men and machines, has prevailed.
As the new century approaches, air power faces new threats and new challenges and jet fighters become ever more complex and costly. Splash One looks to the future of aerial combat and asks the question: will robot warriors, microcircuitry, cruise missiles, RPDs and "smart weapons" replace the fighter pilot, one of the heroes of the twentieth century?