Reviews for Chinese Air Power: Current Organisation and Aircraft of all Chinese Air Forces

The average rating for Chinese Air Power: Current Organisation and Aircraft of all Chinese Air Forces based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-11-22 00:00:00 Brandon Lee This is the complete history of the Red Eagles, a squadron of American pilots that flew MiGs to train other pilots how to fight the Russians and their clients. Davies apparently interviewed almost everyone associated with the Red Eagles, and left no stone unturned. On the downside, this means lots of boring details about changes in command. But buried in the mass of the book are real nuggets of military history gold: black bureaucracy, fighter pilot hijinks, the difficulties of maintaining Russian aircraft without the benefit of spares or manuals, and of course, the stone-cold badassery of the pilots who went up in these airplanes day after day, and mostly brought them back home through the worst conditions. I won't spoil the good bits in this review, but the MiG-23 is just not a good airplane, and it is amazing that it only killed one American.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-11-17 00:00:00 George Humpi A nice look into the secret MiG squadron that flew in the 70's and '80's out of Tonopah, NV and Area 51 by Air Force, Navy and Marine pilots. Told in nearly chronological order there is a lot of information, with a huge cast of characters that is sometimes difficult to keep straight (booking the index page at the end with the list of pilots helps). The narrative flow isn't all that great with lot's of quoted storytelling from the participants rather than the author. There are also a lot of acronyms that someone outside of the military will have to adjust to. But, the information presented is extremely interesting. Planes flown included the MiG 17 Fresco, MiG 21 Fishbed and MiG 23 Flogger. From the technical specs and playing computer games such as Harpoon, I always thought the MiG 23 was a more dangerous plane. But, from this book none of the pilots really liked it and preferred the MiG 21. The eBook was formatted well, but with several spelling errors. There are also several photos in two different sections of the book.