This charming in hard cover and pocket sized executed book called ‘Call Signs- US Army Airplane Stories’ contains stories about the flight experiences of US Army pilots, a group of pilots that do not have the glamorous image of the fighter and bomber pilots we mostly all read about.
However it is a fascinating book to read with stories of 5 US Army pilots, who flew in the 70th and 80th on known civilian aeroplanes in military execution like the Beech King Air, the DHC-7 better known as the Dash 7, the DHC-6 Twin Otter and the Grunman Mohawk (in military execution only). Some types were designed to collect military intel and other types served as transport of persons and or materials.
The stories are containing a big variety of events during operational flights of transports of VIPS and in one case even a beauty queen and intel flights over known hostile and war zones like East Germany, Vietnam and Afghanistan. The pilots involved were confronted with unexpected circumstances like changing weather conditions or technical problems that made their flight unusual or even hairraising. But all the stories had a happy end.
Steve Koenig the author and also the pilot involved in a couple of stories made a nice compilation of their experiences and a career description of all the pilots published in the last paragraph of the book. The whole is provided with a good amount of colour pictures and funny cartoons that are referring to the stories told.
I have read this book with pleasure and especially the story about a VIP transport that was confronted with a heavy CB reminding myself of some fearsome situations in the air that occurred to myself. Happily a crash in this case was prevented but it was a narrow escape.
With 182 pages a pretty and nice readable book that can be purchased also as e-book.
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