The Viper Story, Part 1

F-16s of the Air National Guard

by Jake Melampy  

Reid Air Publications

Reviewed by Darren Mottram

HyperScale is proudly supported by Squadron.com

Well known to many in aviation and photography circles for his passion for all things F-16, in 2007 Jake Melampy released the first in what is evidently planned to be a series of titles dealing with operators of the type in (at least) US service. This one covering the units of the Air National Guard.

This is quite a sizable book at 247 A4 size pages between glossy card covers and the first thing to strike me on a quick "flick through" was the huge number of colour photos featured throughout the book, many by Jake himself but also including contributions from other photographers as well as from official sources. The units are covered by state, in alphabetical order, and wing with a page or so of text providing a brief history of each followed by several pages of photos giving an overview of the colours and markings applied to their F-16s over the years with equal emphasis on regular, line jets and special colour schemes or markings. There are also a few close up shots of things like mission markings or nose art and each photo is informatively captioned with details of the particular airframe or other points of interest. An interesting touch is, at the back of the book, a list of F-16 serials, broken down by version, with the pages where you can find photos of each. Another interesting touch is how the edges of the pages have a coloured stripe along them in a different colour for each unit based on the colours of that unit. This may have been a little more useful though had it also been reflected in the table of contents at the front.

• 
• 
• 

Thumbnail panels:

The quality of photo reproduction throughout the book is generally very good, being printed on good quality satin paper and the book itself has an overall feel of a quality product. I think that for anyone who is "in to" the F-16, even in general terms, or who (like me) just enjoys a great collection of colour photos on a subject, this will be a worthy addition to your bookshelves and may well rate as one of those definitive volumes which are seen as "THE" book to have on a given subject.

Highly Recommended.

Sample purchased with reviewer's funds.
Additional information provided by Jake Melampy

Footnote

I believe that Jake's next book, "The Viper Story, Part II: Test & Training F-16s", will be available this (northern) Summer and will cover F-16s from test and/or training squadrons like Luke, Nellis, Eglin, Edwards, NAS Fallon, etc