A Fighter Pilot is Today’s Modern-day Elite Warrior

Fighter pilots are often the ones to draw first blood in any major military conflict.  Having served in the United States Navy for over a decade flying F-14’s, Mark Marchione lived the life of a fighter pilot. As a fighter pilot, he was deployed overseas with other fighter pilots on an aircraft carrier, and saw firsthand the dangers, the challenges, as well as the thrills, that being a modern day fighter pilot brought to those that lived that life. He drew from this experience as a fighter pilot to write West of the Rock.

This book provides a rare, illuminating look into the elite world of Navy fighter pilots.  In a series of powerful and often harrowing narratives, Mark Marchione presents their life trajectories, from looking up in awe at the power and glory of warplanes, facing the ordeals of even “routine” landings at night on a pitching carrier deck, interacting with the comparatively unremarkable world of civilians, and reaching the point they no longer have the edge needed to be fighter pilots.  

For all the camaraderie, mastery of technique, and daily contests with fear, fighter pilots must also contend with the strains on family life during long deployments, the erosion of the motivations they need to face danger, the mounting death toll of friends, and diminishing faith in the nation’s mission and its seemingly endless confrontations around the world.  Here is the strength of this book– vividly describing, as only a former fighter pilot could, the rise and fall of the beliefs upon which modern fighter pilots rely.

Want to learn more about fighter pilots and the daily life of a fighter pilot? Get your copy of West of the Rock today!