This is a very typical 1980s military novel, even though the time era represented is early 1970s. The protagonist is Jake Grafton, a 27 year old carrier pilot flying missions into Vietnam.

The author really manages to build enough tension into the book to make it a page turner and unlike some of his colleagues he manages to make the characters complex enough to be interesting. It is not just aircraft controls and radio communication and target acquisitions.

As the author has a A-6 Intruder pilot and carrier flight officer the story he tells gains a lot of credibility (as fishing stories told by a real fisherman! :-) ) which I think makes the difference.

As for grade, I was torn between three and four. The story is a three, the execution a four. I will give it a four now. It is a short book and it is a page turner. ( )

Flight of the Intruder is a novel written by Stephen Coonts in 1986 telling the stories of United States Navy aviators flying the A-6 Intruder – a two-man, all-weather, aircraft carrier based strike aircraft on missions during the Vietnam War.

Fast-paced and authentically styled, readers who go into this wanting a book that reads like Top Gun, but with less of an eye to romance, will enjoy this. It's meant to give a view into a fighter's cockpit and travel with a military swagger, and it does so. From chapter to chapter, it's hard to put down, and the characters come across the page as real, careful and flawed and cocky as pilots must be. I haven't seen the movie, though now it's more on my radar than it was before, but I'm looking forward to getting to this book's sequel.

For readers who want what this promises, I'd absolutely recommend it. ( )

5412. Flight of the Intruder, by Stephen Coonts (read 7 Oct 2016) The author was a Navy pilot in the Vietnam War and after the war he went to Colorado U. law school. This is his first book, published in 1986, and he has since published some 36 books! I found this book often exciting and it seemed authentic--the great amount of technical talk convinced me that the author knew lots of things but detracted a bit from the flow of the book. The events were somewhat at times not very likely but the behavior of Navy men on liberty reminded me of my knowledge of Navy life over 60 years ago. There are a lot of spine-tingling events and probably the attitude of some of the fictional characters accurately reflected what may have been an attitude of many men in Vietnam in 1952, controversial as it was. I liked the book enough that I plan to read the book which is its immediate sequel, The Intruders, just to see what Jake Grafton did after the serious difficulty the book ends with. ( )

The first Jake Grafton book--Intruders in Vietnam Nam. A powerful read that brought back memories and said some things about that war. Where is book #2 ? ( )