Archive for Items Categorized 'Aviation', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.
Lockheed Constellation: A Legends of Flight Illustrated History
by Wolfgang Borgmann
A fine book with which to start your Constellation discovery, and also to appreciate big-picture factors such as how different the playbook for air travel once was—and how difficult it was to have to deal with Howard Hughes.
Ronny Bar Profiles: Spitfire, The Merlin Variants
by Ronny Bar
The book intentionally omits any sort of technical or operational detail—because that’s already been covered any which way elsewhere. Instead Ronny Bar does what he does best: show hundreds of examples in profiles to keep modelers busy for years.
GHOSTS 2025 Calendars, The Great War & A Time Remembered
by Philip Makanna
Excellent air-to-air shots, esthetically pleasing, technically tricky, suitable for framing, not expensive. What more could you ask for?
Nieuport 1875–1911: A Biography of Edouard Nieuport
by Gérard Pommier & Bertrand Pommier
Edouard and his brother’s names are writ large in the history of early aviation but try finding a proper full-length biography about them. This isn’t one either but it does contain useful items.
The Heroes We Needed
The B-29ers Who Ended World War II and My Fight to Save the Forgotten Stories of the Greatest Generation
by Trevor McIntyre
This is not another color-within-the-lines aircraft history. If you have an imagination, it’ll hit you were it hurts. And, sure, you’ll learn plenty.
The Four Geniuses of the Battle of Britain: Watson Watt, Henry Royce, Sydney Camm & RJ Mitchell
by David Coles & Peter Sherrard
Radar, airframes, and aero engines played a key role in this predominantly aerial engagement. This book presents bios and work histories of four of the men in the design offices in the years before the war.
I Worked on Spitfires
The Memoirs of a Member of RAF Groundcrew and his Part in the Victory in Europe
by Ronald L. Chapman
Even after all these decades since WWII ended there are still new voices to shed light on increasingly forgotten things, in this case the foreign pilots who fled countries that had fallen to the Germans offering their services to the RAF.
Malta Spitfire Vs – 1942: Their Colours and Markings
by Brian Cauchi
The island of Malta is a small place that played a big role in a world war. The use of Spitfires there tipped the scales. You may not care how they were painted; but find out why you might.
Messerschmitt Me 262: Development and Politics
by Dan Sharp
Why did Germany’s first mass-produced jet go into production so late in the war when the project had actually started months before? There have been many answers, and many myths and rumors. If only there were original documents. Wait, there are, and many are shown and discussed here.
L.A. Birdmen, West Coast Aviators and the First Airshow in America
by Richard J. Goodrich
This small book could have had any number of titles. The story really begins in San Francisco, and years before the 1910 L.A. Meet. The Wright Bros mainly come off as obstructionists. From pilots to makers to business groups, conflict abounds. Happy reading.
Rising Ground and No Room to Turn, A Biography
by Vivien Eyers
When you design, build, and fly your own aircraft—especially if they were never certified—you’ll have some stories to tell. While the protagonist really had no inclination to do that he left enough material behind for his sister to give it a whirl.
The Avro Shackleton: The Long-Serving ‘Growler’
by Jason Nicholas Moore
The Shack is indeed named after the polar explorer because they both went on far-away and long-lasting missions to inhospitable places. It entered service in 1951 and stuck around for 40 years and of all the books about it, this is the most comprehensive.