This book relates the part played by Royal Navy Top Guns in defence of UK’s global national interests since World War II. It is an intimate account of the author’s “technicolour” journey to Top Gun status, the fighter pilot élite of Britain’s armed forces, and provides insight into the real world behind the blockbuster movie. 

It is about the attitude and making of a war-fighter. 

Instructively, it then goes on to provide the unfortunate history of the recent decline of the UK’s Naval Service revealing misleading propaganda and untruths that have been used to fraudulently influence Ministers and the UK Government. 

The two stories are interlinked through personal experience of Phantom F-4K operations from the deck of HMS Ark Royal, nuclear intelligence duties within NATO, Running Sea Harrier development and production in the Ministry of Defence, successful air combat as “Mr Sea Harrier” during the Falklands War, Internecine battles within the Ministry of Defence, Whitehall. 

Major-General Julian Thompson CB OBE, Royal Marines: "Painstaking preparation of his Squadron, superlative personal flying skills, and a determination to engage the enemy more closely, made Sharkey Ward a fighter leader in the mould of Bader, Johnson, Ball, and others in the past."