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Paul McDonald
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Winged Warriors: The Cold War from the Cockpit Kindle Edition

by Thomas McDonald (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 323 ratings
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Paul McDonald is a former RAF fast-jet pilot whose flying career spanned 34 years. He is not a typical senior RAF officer having been brought up on a council estate in a bleak northern industrial town. He became a pilot by accident and struggled to gain his wings. He spent 14 years on operational tours overseas including 2 tours at the height of the Cold War on a Tornado tactical nuclear squadron in Germany, only 15 minutes from responding to an anticipated Soviet onslaught. Earlier he served on a low-level photo reconnaissance squadron on NATO's vulnerable southern flank. He was decorated for gallantry in 1980 and later served in Kuwait as the Senior RAF Adviser, including Operation Desert Fox, the air war against Iraq in 1998.
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  1. Print length
    551 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Pen & Sword Aviation
  5. Publication date
    January 19, 2013
  6. File size
    38581 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
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  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paul McDonald is a retired RAF group captain and a former fast-jet pilot and flying instructor. In his youth he was an Air Cadet and he is a current Air Cadet Gliding Instructor.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00DN5V6CA
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pen & Sword Aviation; Illustrated edition (January 19, 2013)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 19, 2013
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 38581 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 551 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 323 ratings

About the author

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Paul McDonald

Paul McDonald

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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
323 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Alexis
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Information
Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2013
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This is a wonderful, fascinating book filled with an enormous amount of information about the author's experiences as an officer in the Royal Air Force. The book is filled with information only someone active during the Cold War would be familiar with. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the military.
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LiterallyLiterary
4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read, but I Expected More "From the Cockpit" Action.
Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2018
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It took me a bit of thinking to decide what I really felt about this book. As the book progressed, the title struck me as a bit misleading given that the story spends as much time following the author around on ground assignments and the bureaucracy of the RAF training and promotions systems as it spends in the cockpit. However, in the end, I can say I liked it well enough.

The story covers quite a wide swath, the author had a 30 plus year career in the RAF, so it can be a bit much to absorb in some places. The reader has to remember a lot as the author makes many comments about what would become of certain individuals and then refers to several of them again at later points in the book. There's quite a few names to remember.

From a historic value standpoint, this book gives good insights into bygone eras in RAF history such as the end of British military presence on Malta, the end of RAF commitments in Germany and the changes to RAF training after much of it was contracted out.

The author also touches upon having to learn diplomacy in a post Cold War world and becoming friends with people from nations he once trained to fight against.

The book also offers a good look at how military life shapes interpersonal relationships. The author speaks quite candidly about how the very mobile military life affected his family life with regards to home moves and constantly changing schools for his children. It certainly gives food for thought to anyone considering combing a military career with a family.

There is also the poignancy of losing friends through accidents. The author tells the reader enough about certain unit mates that we are taken aback when he tells us of the ones who didn't survive their RAF careers.

As for the "From the Cockpit" aspect of the book, we get a good overview of flying the English Electric Canberra in the reconnaissance role from Malta and in the Middle East. We also get a look at the author's transition training from the Canberra to the Panavia Tornado strike aircraft and his eventual postings with two Tornado squadrons in the former West Germany.

Ultimately, this is the story of a man who definitely was not a "natural" making a success of himself in the RAF in spite of many close shaves with failure and a great deal of bureaucracy along the way.

I have two main criticisms of this book:

Given the amount of time the author spent in training and instructional postings, I would like to have seen the various training aircraft types given more space than they were in the book.

There are regular spelling errors throughout the book that, while they don't get in the way of comprehension or continuity, are distracting and could have been avoided with a bit closer proofreading.
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Kathleen McKeon
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2014
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Excellent book!
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Paul Kelly
5.0 out of 5 stars NOT TO BE MISSED
Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2016
Although written primarily about Paul McDonalds fascinating AirForce career, this book has a much wider appeal. Despite his candid views on flying training and the difficulties this created in his early career, Paul intuitively developed a very skilful ability to write and describe his life in an entertaining and often amusing manuscript. He has dealt with some extremely difficult political topics, some sensitive interpersonal issues, and yet maintained a balanced and well informed perspective throughout. The irony of his final and successful appointments makes this a truly good read and a difficult book to put down once you start reading.
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Top reviews from other countries

Lance
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book
Reviewed in Canada on April 4, 2013
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Best book I have read in a long time. Humerous and informative. A no nonsense true story about a self depricating RAF officer.
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Juliet Foster
5.0 out of 5 stars A memoir that reads like a novel
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2012
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A memoir that reads like a novel charting the remarkable Royal Air Force career of Paul McDonald from young cadet to OBE and on to present day. From North East England to the Middle East. From steel town to steel nerves. This is a story of real people, real lives and real action told with a flair for writing and with a sense of humour uniquely British, uniquely RAF.

Winged Warriors is a memoir for those that don't usually read memoirs and fans of the genre alike. Inspiring on so many levels.

You don't need to be from a services background to relate to this book. "Bonny Lad" has a knack for making the information completely accessible, but this should be no surprise when you read of the experience he has as an instructor.

Action such as the reconnaissance mission to photograph the Kiev, the formidable Russian warship or life and death system failures in Jet Provosts and Tornados would rattle most of us beyond sanity. These are exciting reads among the detailed and at times very poignant narrative of an unusual career.

That career took in far more than the Cold War, taking Paul out to Kuwait at a time most of us only remember from TV news reports and the shocking footage of British tornado pilots battered and bruised in Iraqi `care'.

The Cold War itself is known to most only as a spy novel. Lethal injections delivered by means of an umbrella, the intelligence world and very secret. It was the war that never blew up. But it was very real and they were very dangerous times. Paul is keen and very right to highlight that despite the lack of full conflict, many paid the ultimate price. This book, I feel, is important in that it tells us what the Cold War really meant to the men and women on the front line ready to protect us from a very real threat and also what it could have meant to us at home had they not been there to deter an assault. It simply isn't taught or talked about let alone understood by the vast majority. It needs to be told and made real. Paul does this and does it well.

There are many things to learn from Winged Warriors. For one thing, pythons grow really fast. For another, Kuwait is not the place to work if you're at all paranoid, at least until you grow accustomed to how things are done. But what we take away from this book more than anything else is an enormous respect for those men and women of the Royal Air Force and their families.
10 people found this helpful
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Des Davis
2.0 out of 5 stars Two Stars
Reviewed in Australia on October 16, 2014
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Very informative.
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Brendan Purcell
4.0 out of 5 stars An amazing and ever altering life story
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2019
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A touch of jealousy of the author's experience lingers after reading this book. From a humble, haltering start it continues to wind through every more complex aspects of RAF service. While the earlier parts of the book are very much about the mechanics of being a pilot, the latter is about RAF operations management and strategy.

This cameleon of a story keeps the book interesting, although the last chapter is too rushed. I would have also liked to have read a bit more about Tornado flying - it's a bit dry compared to the earlier chapters covering the Canberra.

That said, the author comes over as a thoroughly "nice guy", a person I'd love to meet. His frankness about his failures and mistakes in his early career is refreshing and instructive. Like Chris Hadfield, Thomas McDonald never gave up, never was anything but himself - and was brilliantly successful as a result. In that, there is a lesson for us all.
3 people found this helpful
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CliffD
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent portrayal of the life of a military pilot during the Cold War.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 16, 2021
Verified Purchase
Well written and well paced with a balanced perspective of a serving RAF pilots life and career during the years of tension between Nato and the Warsaw Pact. The routine endeavours are richly mixed with tense emergencies and factual accounts of Squadron life at the time. The author has captured the human involvement in these events with candor and and the usual military aircrew humour. Anyone familiar with the military lifestyle of this period will appreciate the way that humour was a safety mechanism used to alleviate the stress of the reality of living on the edge of Nuclear Armageddon. A thoroughly good read and a look inside an airmans life at this time.
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