The first spark of an idea for this book was generated well over 30 years ago when I was still an extremely young pilot officer. It was the summer of 1986, a year after my graduation from the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell, and I was commanding a small supply flight at RAF Coltishall in Norfolk. Coltishall was home to a wing of Jaguar aircraft and my office overlooked the airfield’s single metalled runway, allowing me regularly to watch the Anglo-French ground attack aircraft take to the air on their seemingly never-ending training sorties. The Cold War was still the RAF’s main effort, and all three squadrons based at Coltishall were earmarked to deploy forward to mainland Europe in the event of hostilities breaking out with the Soviet Union.

The forward deployment of the Jaguars would leave the station free to be used by North American based United States Air Force or Air National Guard aircraft whose war role was to reinforce Western Europe. This concept of co-located operating bases was regularly practised, and that summer was no exception. Numbers 6 and 54(F) squadrons had been deployed to the Royal Danish Air Force Base at Tirstrup, leaving room at Coltishall for a USAF F-16 Fighting Falcon wing to exercise its reinforcement plans. As my war role was with the third Jaguar squadron – 41 Squadron – which was assigned to a photo-reconnaissance role in northern Norway, I had remained at Coltishall.

I still remember vividly the morning after the Fighting Falcons arrived. It was hot and sunny, not a cloud in the sky. The first wave of Jaguars from 41 Squadron had just taken off – a pair of two ships labouring down the runway, struggling to unstick before reaching the piano keys in the far distance. Nothing new there. Then, a couple of minutes later, a single F-16 taxied out onto the runway. The roar from its single Pratt and Whitney F110 turbofan jet engine grew louder and louder as the pilot opened the throttle wide, the aircraft tyres straining against their brakes. Then, when it seemed the noise couldn’t possibly get any louder, the pilot released his brakes.