Stealing A Russian Fighter Plane - My Most Beloved Books of All Time

Well said! My two most beloved books of all time are Firefox and Firefox Down by Craig Thomas. This is a novel about an ex-US Air Force fighter pilot named Mitchel Gant . He is shot down in Vietnam. He first witnesses his radar officer killed as he ejected from the plane. He is then captured by the Viet Cong and put in a tiger cage. While in captivity he witnesses an attack on the village by US planes dropping napalm (jellied gasoline). When he is sent back to the US Air Force by the Vietnamese, he resigns as a pilot. He is so traumatized by all of the horror and death that he saw that he goes to live alone in a cabin in the Alaska wilderness. Some years later a large US Air Force helicopter lands right near his cabin. Some officers get out and knock on his front door. They tell him that he has been called back to active duty for a new mission. Gant speaks Russian and has a remarkable resemblance to the chief Russian test pilot. They tell him they are going to insert him into Russia. He is to steal an advanced Russian fighter and fly it to Scotland. Gant gets into Russia and steals the advanced Russian plane.Most of the two volumes concern his escape from Russia. Of course the Russians are firing missiles at him. All sorts of Russian fighter planes try to shoot him down. But all of that is a side show. Most important is what happens to Gant as he tries to escape the Russians. He has flash backs to Vietnam. He blacks out (goes unconscious) a couple of time. He vomits in the cockpit. He always doubts himself and is not very optimistic about making it to Scotland. At the end of the second book when he deploys the landing gear to land in Scotland, I was throwing the book up in the air and had tears in my eyes. It was not because Gant had defeated the Russians. It was because he had defeated himself and all of the doubts and fears inside him.