GRANDPA'S HUNTING FIGHT

Those were the days when fighter planes didn't have sharp noses. They didn't carry missiles, they didn't have computers, they didn't use GPS, and they didn't have radar or countermeasures. It all depended on the pilot's sharp eye and his ability to estimate times, speeds, distances, and angles. And to imagine trajectories: his own, those of his crew and those of his opponent. It wasn't a science, it was an art. It was a time of scrimmages, duels, and big fights. With modern equipment, one could find the spirit of the great tournaments of the Middle Ages and the spirit of chivalry that went with them.

The author: 

General Salini spent his entire career in the fighter aviation, from the humble crew member to the commander of the Tours base where the Fighter School was then located. He explains the basics of this art in simple terms that are accessible to all. He also explains the methods used by the fighter bombers and gives us his impressions as a pilot aboard the planes he practiced. In passing, he pays tribute to the veterans who, during the 1940 campaign, fought under difficult conditions, and gives an original opinion on the Battle of Britain.

Curiously enough, he dedicates his book to the memory of General de Brack, who disappeared two hundred years ago. What does this general de Napoleon have to do with fighter aviation? It is that de Brack teaches us, through the centuries past and future, this essential quality without which nothing is possible: "The Warrior Spirit". "We have good soldiers, capable, if need be, of dying with dignity, but do they really have the warrior spirit? Does our system favour the acquisition of this spirit? "These questions occupy a part of the book.