Phantom Boys 2

”…a most suitable follow-up to Phantom Boys, Volume 1, with more scintillating stories from both the front and rear cockpits of one of the world’s most legendary jet fighters… an excellent treatise on flying one of the world’s greatest tactical fighters in the colors of two major world air forces.“– “Air Classics”“Pike has done an excellent job of drawing the reader into the cockpit and then into the skies. The shared tales are engaging and quickly read. While each tale is relatively short–typically less than fifteen pages–all are packed with the details, sights, and sounds of flying one the modern age’s most iconic jet fighters.”– “Air Power History”

Richard Pike became a flight cadet in 1961, at the RAF College, Cranwell where, on graduation, he was awarded the Dickson Trophy and Michael Hill memorial prize for flying. In the early stages of his forty-year flying career he flew the English Electric Lightning before converting to the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom. On leaving the Royal Air Force he became a civilian helicopter pilot. His duties took him to a wide variety of destinations at home and overseas including the Falkland Islands not long after the end of the Falklands War. His last assignment was in Kosovo helping to distribute emergency humanitarian aid on behalf of the United Nations World Food Programme. He and his wife live in Aberdeenshire.