Her Majesty's Top Gun: and the Decline of the Royal Navy

by 'Sharkey' Ward

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 “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”.

501 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 29, 2020

About the author

Royal Navy Top Gun and Air Warfare Instructor, Sharkey was Senior Pilot of 892 Phantom Squadron in the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal during the Cold War. He introduced the Sea Harrier Fighter Aircraft to Naval Service, Commanding the Intensive Flying Trials Squadron 700A; 899 H.Q. Squadron; then 801 Squadron in HMS Invincible in the Falklands. Senior Sea Harrier advisor to the Command on all aspects of the fast jet air war, he flew over sixty war missions by day and night, achieved three air-to-air kills (& one damaged) and was involved in/witnessed eight further kills. During the war he was awarded the Air Force Cross for Services to Harrier Aviation and then decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry. Freeman of the City of London, Member of the Royal Aeronautical Society and 1st place at Greenwich Staff College, he then served in the Ministry of Defence as Air Warfare and Air Weapons Adviser to the Naval Staff and the First Sea Lord before voluntarily retiring.