AIR COMBAT TACTICS AND MANEUVERING MANUALS

Robert Shaw wrote this book because at the time, there was no definitive work available to train real pilots on real tactics and maneuvers used in life-or-death combat struggles. I work in the aviation industry, and have a very large aviation-related book collection, including a complete set of Janes, but this is without any doubt the book that I cherish the most and find the most useful.

AIR COMBAT TACTICS AND MANEUVERING MANUALS

Shaw shows you how it is done.I recommend this book to current fighter aircrew - it is a great supplement to fighter weapons training manuals and courses that sometimes emphasize particular aircraft capabilities while being a bit light on fundamentals.

Readers may find it useful to re-read some chapters - the text is fairly tight and there is much of value in here that might get overlooked.While individual aircraft systems and weapons vary, the basic principles of aerial killing have not changed since WWI: see before being seen, kill before the enemy realizes he is dead, protect your wingman, and come home alive. It is not light reading, but fighter aviation is deadly serious - high speed, three dimensional chess where the loss of the game is a very ugly death.His approach is to begin with the basics (flight sim players might find it useful to consider his chapters 'lesson plans' for practicing) and gradually take the reader into greater depth.

As someone with some experience in the real world of fighter aviation (316 combat missions, F4 Phantom II RIO), Shaw's book is one of the best single-source volumes on the complexity of modern aircraft combat maneuvering.

Air combat tactics and maneuvering