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Joint Strike Fighter
Design and Development of the International Aircraft
by Gerard Keijsper

Over the last 60 years the US, European, and Russian aerospace industries spent the equivalent of many hundreds of millions of dollars to satisfy the military strategists’ dream of combining the best features of several different planes into one do-it-all aircraft. Gerard Keijper’s excellent book tells the story of how the US aerospace industry took many ideas, some good others improbable, over a quarter century of model and wind tunnel testing to create, after many iterations, a viable supersonic vertical take off fighter: the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. This single-seat, single-engine stealth multirole fighter can perform close air support, tactical bombing, and air defense missions and will be built in three versions: conventional takeoff and landing, a short take off and vertical-landing variant, and a carrier-based variant.

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Race Car Vehicle Dynamics
by William F Milliken and Douglas L Milliken

and

Race Car Vehicle Dynamics: Problems, Answers and Experiments
by Douglas L Milliken, Edward M Kasprzak, L Daniel Metz, William F Milliken

When I received my copy of RCVD—still an SAE bestseller—I felt like the guy at the bottom of the mountain to whom Moses handed the Ten Commandments. All the knowledge contained in the Holy Grail of how vehicles handle had just become mine. I am unaware of any other book that brings together the world’s knowledge on vehicle behavior like this one does. On the macro level RCVD deals with general principles of vehicle dynamics but on the micro level was specifically geared towards racing; it synthesizes fundamental theory and practical application. Any race team that doesn’t have a copy of this well written book is not winning as much as they could!

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Men of Power
The Lives of Rolls-Royce Chief Test Pilots Harvey and Jim Heyworth
by Robert Jackson

Test pilot brothers are a rarity, the reviewer knowing only of two: Belper-born Harvey and Jim Heyworth. They both worked for the same company, at the same time, and both became chief test pilot. Harvey, the elder of the two became the third test pilot at Hucknall, where Rolls-Royce had its flight test establishment, in 1936 following service in the Royal Air Force. At the outbreak of war he returned to the service and became a squadron leader in command of a fighter squadron during the Battle of Britain. In the summer of 1941 he was seconded back to Hucknall.

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A Technical & Operational
History of the Liberty Engine

Tanks, Ships and Aircraft 1917–1960
by Robert J. Neal

One of history’s most famous engines, and very possibly the one with the longest active military service life, the Liberty represents an ambitious and visionary solution to what could have become an intractable problem: in the early days of engine-building, be it automotive or aero, anyone who could wield a wrench or run a slide rule had a go—lots of creativity, and also lots of incompatibility. Engines, invariably, have war-related applications and early on planners in government and industry perceived the need for standardized designs, not just to curb manufacturing inefficiencies but also to facilitate field servicing. The theory behind the Liberty was to standardize aircraft engine design by offering one engine in several sizes (i.e. cylinders) to satisfy any foreseeable need. Scalable from four to twelve cylinders—plus an experimental 24-cylinder and one- and two-cylinder models for test purposes—and with many interchangeable parts the Liberty would find application on land, sea, and in the air and after its multi-decade military career soldiered on in civilian life until even today.

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Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird
by Steve Pace

Being able to travel at an altitude of 16 miles and cover 33 miles a minute is an unmatched achievement for a manned airplane even today, some 50 years after someone first dreamt up the Blackbird. Among its many records is the faster-ever New York London time (1974): 1:54:56 hrs which translates to 1806.96 mph!

This is an introductory text and for the benefit of the reader new to the subject, and therefore the most likely to be interested in this book, we ought to provide a few introductory remarks. Many books on the Blackbirds have been published since the 1980s and they don’t all agree on the details. Partly this is due to different approaches to research and scholarship but mostly the discrepancies stem from more and more material becoming declassified over time. The Blackbirds were a super-secret program, in fact, the first planes (single-seaters with civilian pilots) were strictly for the CIA.

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