Fighter Pilot's Heaven presents the dramatic inside story of the American military's transition into the jet age, as told by a flyer whose life depended on its success. With colorful anecdotes about fellow pilots as well as precise technical information, Donald S. Lopez describes how it was to be “behind the stick” as a test pilot from 1945 to 1950, when the U.S. military was shifting from war to peacetime operations and from propeller to jet aircraft. An ace pilot who had served with Gen. Claire Chennault's Flying Tiger Fighter Group, Lopez was assigned at the close of World War II to the elite Proof Test Group of the Air Proving Ground Command. Located at Eglin Field (later Eglin Air Force Base) in Florida, the group determined the operational suitability of Air Force weapons systems and aircraft and tested the first operational jet, the P-80 Shooting Star. Jet fighters required new techniques, tactics, and weaponry. Lopez recounts historic test flights in the P-59, P-80, and P-84, among other planes, describing complex combat maneuvers, hair-raising landings in unusual positions, and disastrous crashes and near crashes. This memoir is peppered with lively accounts of many pilots and their colleagues, revealing how airmen coped with both exhilarating successes and sometimes tragic failures.

Fighter Pilot's Heaven presents the dramatic inside story of the American military's transition into the jet age, as told by a flyer whose life depended on its success. With colorful anecdotes about fellow pilots as well as precise technical information, Donald S. Lopez describes how it was to be “behind the stick” as a test pilot from 1945 to 1950, when the U.S. military was shifting from war to peacetime operations and from propeller to jet aircraft. An ace pilot who had served with Gen. Claire Chennault's Flying Tiger Fighter Group, Lopez was assigned at the close of World War II to the elite Proof Test Group of the Air Proving Ground Command. Located at Eglin Field (later Eglin Air Force Base) in Florida, the group determined the operational suitability of Air Force weapons systems and aircraft and tested the first operational jet, the P-80 Shooting Star. Jet fighters required new techniques, tactics, and weaponry. Lopez recounts historic test flights in the P-59, P-80, and P-84, among other planes, describing complex combat maneuvers, hair-raising landings in unusual positions, and disastrous crashes and near crashes. This memoir is peppered with lively accounts of many pilots and their colleagues, revealing how airmen coped with both exhilarating successes and sometimes tragic failures.

"A fascinating "factional' insight into the lives of Luftwaffe fighter pilots during the Second World War. Gunther Bloemertz was one of the legendary 'Abbeville Boys'of Jagdgeschwader 26, who flew Focke Wulf FW 190 day fighters from their base in northern France. In this vivid personal story, Bloemertz describes life and death on the squadron, his fellow pilots and their almost daily duels with the RAF Spitfires and USAAF Flying Fortresses, fought at both ground level and in the stratosphere over the Pas de Calais ..."--Page 4 of cover

Sit down and strap yourself in for an exhilarating ride to the sound barrier and beyond with a real life Topgun!

James Leininger was just two years old when he began having disturbing nightmares that would not stop. He screamed out in the night: 'Plane on fire! Little man can't get out!' While nightmares are common among children, what happened next shocked those around him... James began to reveal details of planes and war tragedies that no two-year-old boy could know. His desperate parents were at a loss to help him until he said three things: 'Corsair', 'Natoma' and 'Jack Larsen'. From these tantalising clues, James's parents travelled thousands of miles and spent many long years piecing together these facts to try and find an answer that could end his torment. Finally, despite his mother's fears and his father's staunch Christian beliefs, they found only one possibility to the endless coincidences that surrounded every detail in James's life – that their son was reliving the past life of a World War II fighter pilot. Their touching story is one that will challenge sceptics and confirm the beliefs of those who already believe in life after death.

While on his deathbed my father revealed to me a long held and very closely guarded secret, the topic of which he had never shared with another person, not even his late wife. I am convinced he became an alcoholic and closet madman due to the subject of that deathbed confession. I only wish he had told me years earlier as it would have allowed me to better understand the greatest villain, yet greatest hero, of my life. As it was, my father, a supremely gifted aviator, lived his life transitioning between the heaven in which he flew and the hell he fostered on Earth with-in his family. I suffered much collateral damage in my personal life due to the legacy of his abuse while also becoming his finest protégé; I too became an aviator. This memoir takes you, in fine detail, into the esoteric world of these two aviators. From flying biplanes, to F-16s, to B-777s they weathered the storms of mother nature as they circumvented the globe in whatever aircraft they were flying at the time. In addition to mother nature's maelstroms, they battled the personal storms of each other, and from with-in, as they navigated through life in an attempt to redefine either themselves or the other. The book's supporting characters are the many other pilots, both friends and colleagues, with whom their lives converged and intertwined on awe-inspiring adventures that showcased the best and the worst that the world has to offer. This is a tale that illuminates the vilest of hearts, the most jubilant of hearts, and in the final resolve how a child helped to bring his father to redemption on the last day of his life; in essence it's a story of never giving up.