Archive for Items Categorized 'Aviation', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

P-61 Black Widow, Northrop Night Fighter in WWII

by David Doyle

Designed from the outset to incorporate then-new radar the P-61 became America’s first dedicated night fighter, capable of carrying heavy weapons to give it the bite of the deadly nocturnal predator spider it is named after.

Bloody Dangerous: Fifty Missions Over Germany

The Last First-Hand Account From World War II

by Flt Lt Colin Bell, DFC

Chew on that subtitle for a moment: the last first-hand? Sure, you’ve seen a pile of war biographies already … but this author is a centenarian. And he rappelled down the side of a building at 102. Bloody dangerous all over again.

SR-71 Blackbird: Stories, Tales, and Legends

by Richard H. Graham

The Blackbird may be old but stories about this “hottest plane in the cold war” don’t get old. Here people who were involved in many different areas of its building and operation relate stand-out situations.

Skyhookers

An Illustrated History of Hook-on Aircraft and Their Dirigible Motherships

by William Wolf

You’re looking up at an airship in flight, little aircraft buzzing around it. You blink; they’re gone! Before the U.S. Navy perfected that trick there was an already long history of exploring how to launch one aircraft from another, perchance to also capture it again.

Douglas DC-8

by Wolfgang Borgmann

Initially conceived as an aerial-refueling tanker for the USAF, Douglas lost that bid to Boeing but pivoted to reconfigure the project as a long-range civilian jetliner; it would outlast its Boeing competitor by a wide margin—one flew in the US as late as 2025.

Midnight Flyboys

by Bruce Henderson

Operation Carpetbagger was a covert op and remained classified for half a century but then received a Presidential Unit Citation and Congressional Gold Medals for the outsize contributions to the war effort.

British Private Aircraft

by Arthur W.J.G. Ord-Hume

This book and its sister volume may look unassuming but they are nothing of the sort. They are also so well written that anyone with an ear for language will find them enriching.

L-15 Scout, Boeing’s Smallest Airplane

by Mal Holcomb

The “L” stands for Liaison and in theory this was a sensible aircraft. It was developed for a military contract that never materialized, and no civilian market ever emerged either. Only one is still flying, but you’d have to go to Alaska to see it.

Test Pilots: The Story of British Test Flying 1903–1984

by Don Middleton

Written by a pilot who is also a good writer this 1985 book continues to impress. This is not about flyboy derring-do but the hard and dangerous work of trying out things that look good on paper but have never been done in the wild before.

U-2 Over the Soviet Union

America’s Famous Cold War Spy Plane from a Soviet Perspective

by Dmitry Degtev

What the American military and political leadership thought they got out of the U-2 program is of course exhaustively documented. But how did it look to/from the “other side”? Answers here.

Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War

by Bruce Henderson

Can’t think of anything inspirational this Thanksgiving? Here’s a story of escape and survival against all odds that’ll make you thankful for many things, not least that you were not tested as the protagonist was.

I’m Not the Only Idiot in the Cockpit

by Dennis Breen

A funny memoir that at times makes you doubt the man never had an actual accident in all his years of flying or being around aircraft in other capacities (cf. repo man!).

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