Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Speed of Heat: An Airlift Wing at War in Iraq and Afghanistan | 2008 | Tom Young / Thomas W. Young | Buy |
The Speed of Heat (2008) recounts Tom Young’s experiences as a military airlift pilot flying missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Young flew C-130 and C-5 cargo planes as an Air National Guard officer, and this memoir draws on those deployments. The title comes from a military phrase for flying at the edge of an aircraft’s performance limits. His account covers the daily grind of airlift operations, from hauling equipment into hostile airfields to the close calls that come with flying in a combat zone.
The book was published before Young transitioned to fiction writing with his Parson and Gold series. Readers of his novels will find The Speed of Heat useful as background, since the same military aviation knowledge that fills the memoir also shapes his fiction.