Paco Chierici. Lions of the Sky. Braveship Books, 2018.
Fans of action adventure novels like those of Tom Clancy or Brad Thor might get a kick out of Lions of the Sky. Former military people would likely identify with some parts of it, and anyone interested in an intense alpha culture would get insights.
Lions of the Sky, as noted, is a work of fiction, but it recreates the world of Navy fighter pilots in more detail and more accurately than the popular film Top Gun. Fortunately, this novel does not allude to that film or even use the expression “top gun.”
We follow a class of U. S. Navy pilots taking the nine-month class to fly the newest and fastest jet fighter in the fleet, the FA-18E Super Hornet, nicknamed the Rhino. The story focuses on two of the instructors—Slammer and JT—and two female pilot trainees—Dusty and Quick.
Typical of the navy fighter fraternity, we get to know them by their nicknames. Indeed, part of their initiation is that they somehow earn their nicknames. In many cases they echo or hint at their actual names. For example, Slammer’s first name is Samuel, but the nickname also captures his intensity. (We liked that name because it suggested to us our once and future grammar program Grammar Slammer.) We can also see how the nicknames of the two women pilots go with their last names: Dusty Rhodes and Quick Silvers. One of the trainees calls another one a bonehead; his handle becomes HOB, head of bone.
The Rhinos have a crew of two, the pilot and the Weapons System Operator (WSO) who sits behind the pilot sharing weapon and navigational information with the pilot. For much of their careers, JT has been Slammer’s WSO. They communicate well and understand each other. There is complete trust and mutual respect. They are best friends. They even scored a hit during an encounter in Iraq.
There is a lot of adrenaline and a lot of testosterone in this novel. A major portion of the conflict comes from the fact that Dusty and Quick are the first two females ever assigned to fly Rhinos. There is nothing feminist about this book, but, let’s face it, the women have to prove their mettle.
Slammer’s past further complicates things because earlier in his career before flying Rhinos, he had a female pilot friend Robin who crashed. This means not only is he unsure about female pilots, partly because he seems to blame himself for Robin’s death, but he is very careful not to become friendly with them. This in spite of the fact that he finds one of them very attractive, and JT finds the other one so.
We also see Dusty and Quick taking slightly different approaches to their training. Dusty is more of a political animal, to use Aristotle’s expression. She comes from the New York upper class and has connections. She seems to know a lot of people. We wonder if she even got the assignment because of who she knows rather than what she knows.
Quick likes speed. We first meet her driving a yellow Corvette near Virginia Beach where the pilot training will shortly begin. The question for her is simple: She can fly, but can she fight? They are called fighter jets for a reason.
Much of the story tells how the candidates survive or do not survive this specialized flight school. It also brings out some operational difficulties because political correctness mandates the women succeed even if perhaps they really should not. Even among the male candidates, a few in every class drop out.
The author lifts the veil on some of the specialized traditions and games of Navy pilots, for example, certain initiations or the rowdy drinking game known as Crud. This is entertaining. Anyone with military experience can probably identify their own initiations and traditions in whatever branch or specialty they were a part of. We learn that a few of these traditions have had to change with the introduction of women into the various specialties. These are mostly shared in good humor. Indeed, the military in time of war is very serious, so there must be ways they can lighten up or release tensions.
Even Air Force fighter pilots will acknowledge that the Navy pilots have a greater challenge for one reason. They have to be able to take off and land on an aircraft carrier. There is very little room for error even with tailhooks and catapults. Part of the training is learning how to land a Rhino on a carrier deck night or day.
Every fourth or fifth chapter there is a short chapter dealing with a Chinese commando, or Biédòngduì (Mandarin for commando). Under the orders of his general, he singlehandedly creates some incidents in the South China Sea. Anyone following the news knows that several nations have laid claims to part or all of this region because of its potential oil reserves. Readers can guess that eventually the Chinese general’s plans and the newly deployed fighter pilots’ lives will intersect.
The author is a former navy fighter pilot. I suspect that Paco was his Navy nickname. Hemingway described Paco in his short story “The Capital of the World” as the commonest Spanish nickname for boys. Clearly, he knows what flying a 20-ton fighter jet at near twice the speed of sound in up to 7Gs is like. He communicates that very effectively.
In a kind of “In Memoriam” at the end, Chierici names pilots and WSOs that he knew who died in action. Most of these crashes were stateside, so we know they were not combat deaths, but that list emphasizes the risks that military pilots take. The danger adds to the “rush.” Indeed, some readers may think the book overuses the word adrenaline.
This made me reflect on my own Coast Guard experience which was during peacetime, after Vietnam and before the First Gulf War. Of my graduating officer class, to the best of my knowledge only one person died on duty, and he was a pilot whose helicopter went down over the Calumet River in Chicago on a winter day. Guys on cutters and lifeboats nowadays normally survive. It has been a long time since the Lifesaving Service rowed out to the rescue. Flying is not natural for man, but it can be very exciting precisely for that reason and because it is inherently dangerous.
One word of caution to some readers: Virtually all the characters are sailors, and they use salty language.