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141that in its short life as a fighter, five different production marks enteredservice, a procurement policy which today would be seen as grosslyextravagant. The Hunter F.1 with its 100-series Avon served for only alittle over a year before being retired to OCU duties at Chivenor andPembrey, being replaced by the longer range F.4 which served for onlytwo years or so before it too became the training variant at Chivenor. TheSapphire-powered F.2 was retired to ground instructional duties within ayear or so of entry to service and its longer range successor, the F.5,lasted for barely three years before its withdrawal from service. Thosesquadrons which survived the 1957 Defence White Paper were reequipped with the F.6, easily the best of the breed, powered by the 200-series Avon, before many of the latter found new leases of life withinanother two years or so as FGA 9s or FR 10s.However, this profusely illustrated book is, like the curate%u2019s egg, onlygood in parts. The cover photograph, while technically competent,portrays a gaggle of T.7s from RAF Lossiemouth which, although atraining base for RN and RAF Hunters over the years, was not a naturalhome of Hunter squadrons nor was the two-seater the most handsomemark of this superb aircraft. The pages contain a number of memorableanecdotes such as the great West Raynham debacle which led to the lossof six Hunter F.1s and Roger Hymans%u2019 remarkable story of his failedattempt to intercept the unreachable U-2, typical of sorties flown bymany of us in the late 1950s, both in Germany and in Cyprus, which atthe time were deemed to be heavily classified. Tony Alldridge%u2019s personalexperience of the Black Arrows and Blue Diamonds aerobatic teams, AlPollock%u2019s spirited account of his solo flypast of the Houses ofParliament, after flying under Tower Bridge, to mark the RAF%u2019s 50thbirthday and Alastair Aked%u2019s splendidly illustrated description of flyingHunters into Iraq all make great reading.It is good too to read some stories from the groundcrew such as RayDeacon%u2019s tale of John Jennings%u2019 eight aircraft attack on the Beihan Fortand, from an RN artificer, Jack Rowe%u2019s observation that the Hunter wasthe most trouble free aircraft which he had ever come across. As an RAFarmourer, Ken Hazell%u2019s vivid description of the day at Horsham St Faithwhen a Hunter F.4 aborted its take off and finished in a field, a Javelincaught fire while taxiing and another Hunter crash landed, is nicelymatched by Boz Robinson%u2019s observations of the same event from thecockpit. It seems that Exercise VIGILANT in the spring of 1957 was