ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing this book would not have been possible without considerable help from a number of people. I am very grateful to Vic Flintham and Graham Pitchfork who were very supportive at the outset of the project and allowed me access to their photograph collections. I would also like to record my thanks to the incredibly helpful staff at the RAF Museum, in particular the Curator of Photographs Andy Renwick, and Ian Alder, the manager of the RAFM Reserve Collection, both of whose support was invaluable. At the Air Historical Branch, Lee Barton was most helpful and Mick Davis at Cross & Cockade International was generous to a fault. I am also very grateful to Phil Jarrett for providing a number of excellent images for the early chapters and to Richard Cooke for allowing me to use his fantastic shots from the late 1970s.

Many thanks indeed to the following individuals who very kindly allowed me to use their private photographs, which I believe give a unique perspective on more recent operations: Paul Beevers, David Bellamy, Paul Froome, Andy Glover, David Hales, Tim Kerss, Chris Knight, Paul Lashmar, David Lewis, Mike Lumb, Nigel Nickles, Peter Rolfe, Mark Sheppard, Chris Stradling, Andy Thomas and Derek Tuthill.

Where there was meagre detail in published sources, I sought help from a number of eyewitness experts to help me to understand some aspects of recent operations. I’m very grateful to the following for their advice and expertise: Tim Kerss (Jaguar operations over the Balkans), Malcolm Rainier DFC (Jaguar operations during the Gulf War), Pete Birch (Jaguar Mid Life Update and TIALD integration), Andy Tagg and Sean Bell (Harrier GR7 operations), Gareth Jones and John Platt (Nimrod operations). I’m also grateful to Philip Weyers, grandson of Jan Smuts, for enlightening me on aspects of the ‘Oubaas.’

I am extremely grateful to Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach for writing a foreword to this book. Sir Stuart and I were contemporaries on 31 Squadron flying Tornado GR1s from Brüggen in the late 1980s, where he earned my utmost respect for his professional expertise and his encyclopaedic grasp of ‘the big picture.’

Finally, many thanks to Marcus Cowper at Osprey Publishing for his support and to my indefatigable editor, Jasper Spencer-Smith, a man once described as a cross between a ram and an armadillo, whose imagination first envisaged this book and whose patience I have tested to the limits during the production process.