This book is another volume by aviation enthusiasts published by Schiffer detailing a conflict that has not seen a lot of coverage by mainstream publishing houses. Of the two authors, Tom Cooper is an Austrian writer who has a history of publishing books dealing with Middle East and African wars with a focus on air forces and air arms. Farzad Bishop was born in Iran and has worked with Cooper on at least two other works that deal with the Imperial Iranian Air Force and Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IIAF/IRIAF) during the Iran-Iraq War.

This book, published in 2000, has 304 pages broken down into 12 chapters, a preface, an introduction, a summary, a section on aircraft markings, and a glossary. The first three chapters set the stage for the conflict by describing the origins of both the Iraqi Air Force (IrAF) and the IIAF. Chapter 4 details the start of the eight-year war, and the book proceeds chronologically through the conflict with each chapter describing a particular phase of the war.

A look at the authors' backgrounds shows of they divided the writing workload: Mr. Cooper concentrates on the Iraqi aspects of the air war while Mr. Bishop concentrates on the Iranian side of things. The book has a bit of an Iranian bias, no doubt due to Mr. Bishop's background and a reliance on sources in the Imperial Iranian Air Force Associataion in the United States. The IrAF coverage is simply not as detailed as that of the IRIAF, although what is available is still helpful in filling out the details of this air war. There is considerable coverage of the ground campaigns as well--a necessity given the close relationship between air operations and ground operations.

I ahve torn feelings about this book. Any book about the Iran-Iraq War suffers from a lack of authoritative sources, as both warring governments were not known for their transparency. Therefore researchers of this conflict are dependent upon official government press releases, and, in this instance, upon personal accounts of former IIAF/IRIAF members who defected over the years of the war. Even some of the Iraqi accounts in the book are actually Iranian debriefs of captured IrAF pilots. As this book covers an air war, it naturally sufferes from excessive casualty claims and bomb damage assessment inflation, which is natural for any air war regardless of the combatants.

So my evaluation of this book boils down to its credibility. For the vast majority of the books I read I depend upon the research and expertise of the authors. However, in this case, the authors detail events in which I participated as the member of the crew of a U.S. Navy ship assigned to Operation Earnest Will in 1987. While some of the events of that operation described in the book are quite accurate, such as the recovery of an Iraqi pilot in the southern Persian Gulf in August 1987 (page 251), there are other events that appear to be fabrications, such as the promulgation of a March 1988 order to U.S. Navy ships to stop aiding IrAF aircraft (page 264).

Once the trust between author and reader is broken, the reader can rightfully question other "facts" as presented in the book. While I appreciate the considerable effort it took both authors to write this volume and the uniqueness of the information presented, I must caution my fellow readers on this book because of the obvious bias and the accuracy, which is why I awarded it 2 1/2 stars. ( )