Viper Pilot: A Memoir of Air Combat

In VIPER PILOT, an elite aviator takes readers into rarefied air: the closed world of fighter pilots and modern air combat. During his twenty years in the USAF (1986-2006), U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Dan Hampton flew 151 combat missions in the world's most iconic fighter plane--the F-16 "Fighting Falcon," or "the Viper" as its pilots call it.
Hampton saw extensive action in the Iraq War, during which he received an extraordinary three Distinguished Flying Crosses with Valor and a Purple Heart. Hampton also was scrambled into the skies on 9/11 and secured American airspace in the weeks that followed, and he previously flew combat missions in the first Gulf War and the Kosovo conflict, as well as having coming of age at the end of the Cold War. With the rise of drones and other unmanned aircraft, this may be the last memoir of a true hero of the skies.
VIPER PILOT is a fascinating look into the mind and making of those elite few who have "the right stuff." Hampton recounts gripping stories of his saving US ground soldiers from certain death, of evading heat-seeking missiles that have locked on his tail, and of being wounded in an enemy's air strike on his base. He also reveals what it takes psychologically to become "the best of the best."