Once A Fighter Pilot

Rating:
Summary: Just like talking to the man.
Review:

The author is my cousin, and I've heard a number of the stories over the dinner table at one or another Thanksgiving long before they turned up in this book; and when you read this book, that's what you get--true tales conversationally told by a shure-as-shootin' warhorse.

The best thing about the book is its informal authenticity. Written utterly without a ghostwriter and barely touched by any meddling editors, that authenticity comes through.

Stylistically, General Cook may come off looking a little raw, but he spent his life as a fighting man, not a writing man.

Rating:
Summary: Courage Under Fire (and Mismanagement.)
Review: As an enthusiast of modern day aerial warfare, complete with its thrust-vectoring, BVR engagement, pin-point bomb delivery, and missiles that actually work, I had some reservations about reading this book. Adding to my apprehension was the timeframe, set early in the Viet Nam War while valuable lessons were still unlearned, and the mere fact that it had anything to do with the Viet Nam War. Though I was born as Saigon fell in '75, I feel such intense and conflicting emotions when reading about it. Anyways, let me just say that General Cook quickly laid to rest all of my apprehension. From page 1 onward I was hooked. "Once a Fighter Pilot" is a chronicle of Cook's Air Force career from enlistment, through training, and finally his deployment to, survival of, and return home from SE Asia. His recollections of his combat experiences are very vivid and involving, especially for the amount of time between the experiences and the writing of this book. Most impressive was Cook's "anti-Maverick" attitude and admission of feeling real human emotions such as fear and sorrow, a rare quality among fighter-jock autobiographies. Most sobering were the General's accounts of losing close friends to accidents and to the enemy. Cook allows those of us who were born after the war to feel the pain and frustration of the generation that lived through it, feelings that bring with them an understanding of why that pain and frustration continue to be felt today. I had to refrain from giving this book a 10 simply because I wanted more. Though Cook acknowledges that many memories have been forgotten or are so blurred to render them untransferable to the written word, I still felt like this man had many more stories of bravery, heroism, high-spirited wit, and sorrow to tell. I highly recommend this book not only to enthusiasts of military aviation, but to critics of those who put their lives on the line in Viet Nam, as well as anyone with an appreciation for good stories about the ups and downs of li! fe, especially stories that are as well-written and easy to follow as Cook's "Once a Fighter Pilot."

Rating:
Summary: Full Afterburner
Review: I've had the pleasure of meeting Jerry Cook and I can tell you he is what an aerial warrior is all about. This means he appreciates not only the firepower that is his responsibility, but also the restraint that is necessary as well. Above all, being a pilot myself, I can viscerally place myself in his rapt descriptions of aircraft performance and raw power. His situational "awareness" and extraordinary flying skills easily flow off the page, and speak to the incredible edge that must be developed and maintained to fight and survive in ACM environments.

Jerry, thanks for your service to the country. Although the war was extraordinarily complicated, with no real winners, the fact that you gave your all to your Commander in Chief under the flag of freedom is appreciated and respected.

Rating:
Summary: Full Afterburner
Review: I've had the pleasure of meeting Jerry Cook and I can tell you he is what an aerial warrior is all about. This means he appreciates not only the firepower that is his responsibility, but also the restraint that is necessary as well. Above all, being a pilot myself, I can viscerally place myself in his rapt descriptions of aircraft performance and raw power. His situational "awareness" and extraordinary flying skills easily flow off the page, and speak to the incredible edge that must be developed and maintained to fight and survive in ACM environments.

Jerry, thanks for your service to the country. Although the war was extraordinarily complicated, with no real winners, the fact that you gave your all to your Commander in Chief under the flag of freedom is appreciated and respected.

Rating:
Summary: A good read about a fascinating man
Review: This book is one man's story about his career in the Cold War air force. This is a collection of rememberences and recollections told with the straightforward style of a man who's flown jet aircraft most of his life.

He explains how his parents went from selling auto parts to owning their own Buick and Pontiac dealership in Oklahoma, and how on a visit to them during training he was pulled over by a sheriff's deputy just outside of town. He thought he had been speeding in his Pontiac convertible hotrod and was getting a ticket, but the deputy did a bit of hotrodding himself and wanted to challenge this young pilot to a race. Thinking that the deputy was just trying to get an easy speeding ticket out him, Mr. Cook was a bit cautious. The solution: the deputy would signal the start of the race and turn on his siren and lights so that people would think he was chasing Mr. Cook. It sounded fair enough so off they went to a lonely stretch of highway. They picked a start point and end point and the race was on. Cook's Pontiac took off like a rocket and soon the deputy's hopped-up hardtop was a dot in the rear view mirror. At the end of the race, Mr. Cook got out and the deputy jumped in his Pontiac. "Now we'll race back to town!" he said as the Pontiac shot off down the road. Mr. Cook got in the deputy's car and drove back to town, in no particular hurry since he had proven his point already.

He found his Pontiac in the parking lot of his dad's dealership and he could see the deputy in a heated discussion with Cook's dad. Exercising the better part of valor he hung out in the mechanics bay until things cooled down. After awhile his dad came looking for him and asked him if he knew what that discussion was about. Thinking that his joy-riding days were over, Mr. Cook muttered a few things, but before he could finish his dad said that he had just sold a brand new Pontiac hardtop to the deputy and that he had Mr. Cook to thank for it. Cook's dad never found out exactly how the deal wa! s done.

And there are a few stories about pretty girls, life, and death, and combat. I haven't gotten to the part where he gets transferred to 'Nam yet, but I expect the rest of the book to be just as entertaining and well-written as the first parts are.

This review really doesn't do justice to the book. I think that this book could become one of the classics in my air combat library, along with "Baa Baa Black Sheep" by Gregory Boyington, "Samurai" by Saburo Sakai, and "Mustang Ace" by Robert Goebel.

Rating:
Summary: Always a Fighter Pilot
Review: This is an excellent story and a rare insight to the real life of an Air Force fighter pilot. One of the major reasons I enjoyed this book was in how little being in the Air Force has actually changed since the days when Cook served.

This is one of those few books that actually gives you a sense of "being there," and it has some touching stories as well as some funny stories. The only problem is the author tends to repeat himself A LOT, so if you read it cover-to-cover (like most people do), you get a sense of deja-vu. Anyway, good book.