Before Topgun Days: The Making of a Jet Fighter Instructor

The elite navy pilot and author of Topgun Days tells the thrilling story of his struggle to become one of the best to ever take the skies.
 
An instructor in the navy’s Topgun Program, Dave “Bio” Baranek had always dreamed of becoming a jet fighter. After graduating from college, he joined the navy to pursue that goal. Though deteriorating eyesight would keep that dream from becoming a reality, he soon found his calling as a radar intercept operator in the backseat of the sleek, new a Grumman F-14 Tomcat.
 
Before Topgun Days puts you in the cockpit alongside Baranek as he embarks on the greatest adventure of a lifetime. Set before the events recounted in his previous memoir, Topgun Days, Baranek gives an honest and unflinching account of the anxieties, disappointments and excitements of entering the nerve-wracking and high-stakes world of fighter jocks.
 
“This is an aviator’s book—for anyone who loves to reach for the sky.” —Wolfgang W. Samuel, Colonel, USAF (Ret.), author of German Boy and In Defense of Freedom
 
“Only someone who has actually experienced the demanding instruction required to earn this unique position in a flight crew, followed by the months of deployments in the fleet in a combat-ready F-14 squadron, could hope to tell this story in such deeply personal detail . . . Great job, Bio!” —Peter Mersky, author of Whitey, F-8 vs. MiG-17, and US Marine Corps Aviation since 1912