I posted this on Amazon a few days ago, but I'd like to repeat it here, with a couple of additions:
This is an extraordinary story, long overdue. And John Nichol is well quallfied to tell it, better than most.
I thought I knew the Tornado GR1 well, and the people who flew it. It was my working life for seven years and I knew many of those mentioned, and flew with quite a few. Yet John Nichol, whom I did not know, has peeled away thirty years of a fading memory, to get to the very heart of an astonishing story: delving with immense sensistivity into the hearts and minds of those who served and those who loved them. John has a gift for descriptive writing. And he does not spare us harrowing detail. He tells us how it was. He was there.
For me this was an exceptionally tough read, an emotional roller-coaster, that I could not put down, desperate to know what happened even though, in broad terms, I already knew. But it must have been an awful lot tougher for the many contributors to recount their stories. To fly into hell and back, then do it again, and then again, with one or two less than before, is unimaginable. How they coped belies belief. Those captured found themselves in another hell of man's making. How the families came to terms with fear, with loss, and with not 'knowing' is particularly well told; they have my absolute admiration.
This is a worthy testament to an iconic aircraft, to the airmen and women who flew it and kept it in the air, and to the families on whom they relied.
Yes, it is an extraordinary story, and it is extraordinarily well told.
Wherever Rocky is now, I'm sure he would join me is saying 'Well done, John', on lots of counts.