Strike Eagles

by James Coyne

Lieutenant Colonel Tom Johnson leads the "Deadly Jesters," highly trained pilots of the F-15E Strike Eagle force, into battle against the Soviets

Genres: Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1990

Reviews

[Michael Toleno · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recall that I purchased Strike Eagles at an airport bookstore, probably when I was on one of my many leaves from the Naval Academy. I knew at the time that it was reading “brain candy” or “fluff” and that it was piggy-backing on the military techno-thriller trend. Still, while the plot isn’t fleshed out as much as in a real novel, the writing is not far behind some of the mainline military thriller writers, and probably even better than some of Tom Clancy’s worst offerings, such as SSN.

Coyne, an Air Force fighter pilot, writes about a conventional World War III in Central Europe, a common theme in that era. A few F-15E Strike Eagle aircrew battle the Soviets in a series of missions that seem like a progressive video game.

As with all of my pre-2000 books, the “Date finished” may be a few years off.

[Brian Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1990, this book looks at a future cold war gone hot in an unspecified year.
Concentrating on the team of Deadly Jesters and this missions they fly in their F16's. The rest of the war is mentioned briefly in passing, but not in detail.

Bit dated now, as they fly between East and West Germany (still two separate contries when this was written) and fight the Soviets, but there's a lot of detail in the book. Liberally illustrated with photos of the planes and equipment mentioned, as well as pages from operations manuals.