Into the Sunlit Splendor

Book excerpt: In a Willian S. Phillips painting--a tight formation of F-4 Phantoms screaming over Crater Lake, Oregon; the Blue Angels soaring near the California coast; a violent confrontation between a German Bf-109 and a RAF Spitfire above Sussex's Beachy Head; a line of Bell Hueys passing through a monsoon-soaked valley in Vietnam--a viewer can almost feel the pressure on his body from the groundblurring speed of the plane, his mouth go dry in the desert air, or the chill on his neck when it's so cold it hurts to breathe. Phillips is also a superb landscape and "skyscape" painter who places his subjects in geographic and historical context. A wealth of aviation and military history by Ann and Charlie Cooper accompanies the paintings, as do Phillips's own archival photographs.