ACES HIGH

Fast jet fighters, transports and trainers, all the way from target tug to Top Gun itself: modern military air power captured in its element by some of the world's finest aviation photographers.

As Walter Boyne makes clear in his introduction, military flying involves minute- by-minute, life-or-death adjustments to

equipment costing tens of millions of dollars in the face of hazards ranging from bad weather to rapidly emptying fuel tanks. Add the threat of imminent destruction by hostile missiles and the sheer physical stress of high-g combat manoeuvres and the pilot of a modern fighter needs to be "a combination Olympic class athlete, executive and samurai-ninja"

This book collects the work of some of the finest aviation photographers operating on both sides of the Atlantic in an attempt to convey some of the care, skill and precision as well as the undoubted glamour - that military flying involves.

The book's scope extends from the basic trainers on which every pilot earns his wings to the display teams whose purpose is to show off the talents of the finest pilots and the performance of their machines.

Between the two extremes it covers the whole range of military aircraft: the tactical fighters and other fast jets that are most people's ideas of what air power is all about: the strategic bombers that give it global reach: the naval aircraft and maritime patrol types that cover the world's oceans; the exotic spyplanes and electronic warfare types whose missions are vital to the survival of the strike element; the helicopters that give ground forces three-dimensional mobility: and the tankers and transports without which the whole show would grind to a halt.

The special characteristics of all these types are captured here, their individual dynamics frozen by the camera lens to form a breathtaking gallery of modern air power in its element.