Airframes
Benevolens Magister
Nice !
A new book in my library.
- Thread starter Wayne Little
- Start date
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- Thread starter
- #7,364
Good stuff there Karl and Jim.
Looks very interesting Jim
fubar57
General
You'll be multi-lingual in no time JimConslaw
Senior Airman
New book in my e-library is "Military Review" US Army Professional Journal, 1946. This is a free ebook. This particular volume is basically a recap of things learned during World War II. Military Review - Google Play 1500 pages. I suggest just opening it to a random page and start reading.
This book was purchased to augment the sparse library of books available on the Vultee Vengeance. And as such, fills an important niche.The depth of the operational histories by Mr. Smith is breathtaking considering the amount of research that had to be performed, the index alone is breathtaking in its scope of listing the aircrew from the various Commonwealth countries that flew the aircraft. The Indian squadron histories alone receive 94 pages which is phenomenal coverage for a little-known air force flying a little-known plane. While the RAF gets the lion's share of the volume with 184 pages, there are 12 pages devoted to singular paragraphs of other operators.
The coverage given the Australian squadrons that saw combat and other operators is almost nil, and the author acknowledges it by referencing his book "Dive Bombers at War.". This chapter is almost an afterthought appendix in scope.
This book is a solid three stars per my reading preferences. To be honest, I stopped reading it page by page and will now only pick it up occasionally to skim through the chapters.
This book will be of zero interest to modelers or anyone one interested in the technical or maintenance aspects of the Vengeance.
However, this book is a five-star seminal record of operational combat histories of Commonwealth squadrons operating in the CBI. This book is strongly recommended for anyone interested in air warfare in the CBI, and, or the unit histories of the Commonwealth squadrons that served in the CBI.
A Surprisingly Fast And Enjoyable Read
This volume excels as a brief introduction to post WWII European Research Aircraft. The volume covers forty-five aircraft and their variants with just over 200 pages dedicated to the aircraft themselves. While it's a great survey covering notable aircraft, by the nature of its brevity it's going to leave many wanting more. Fortunately for readers who can read French there is an extensive bibliography listing the source material covering a page and half. For us English monolingual types? Not so much.
Which brings up the main reason to buy this book. There is a paucity of more technical or developmental history literature available on any of the French, Swedish, Swiss, or German aircraft covered in this volume in English. The authors selected a nice variety of aircraft to cover the important design trends over a 35+ year period. Mixed-power, Delta, swept, and variable-geometry aircraft are covered as well as the V/STOL experiments. This also includes a few proof-of-concept vehicles that were designed to explore the bottom end of the flight envelope as well.
Coverage of the aircraft is non-uniform. Some aircraft only getting three pages like the Sud Ouest SO M.2 to a few aircraft getting as many as twelve pages like the Nord 1500 Griffon I and Griffon II. There doesn't appear to be much rhyme or reason, as some arguably important aircraft like the SAAB Draken proof of concept SAAB 210 only receives four pages even though it led to a production aircraft. Some aircraft have cutaways while others do not. The predominance of the cutaways is to be found with the British aircraft due to the excellent coverage provided by the contemporary British aviation periodicals of the time. The lack of cutaways for the other aircraft is disappointing. There are a few mistakes/typos with the conversion of metric to imperial units, but with the metric numbers right there, it's not a glaring show killing error. Overall the book is an enjoyable read with pages disappearing quickly in your hands.
It can't be recommended for modelers or the excessively technically minded.
But it is enthusiastically recommended for anyone looking for a technically competent overview of a European Aircraft development from post-World War II until the late '60's. I will be buying volume II.
I was this many years old before I realized these are the same book, one in English the other in German.
Who knew?
fubar57
General
I knew Flugzeug was the same as another English language one but couldn't remember which. Thanks for the warning
Wait until you've lost track and realize you've just bought a duplicate book.View attachment 566011
I was this many years old before I realized these are the same book, one in English the other in German.
Now you should have some fun and see which edition is better illustrated.
I didn't have to wait long:
I have two copies of Famous airplanes of the World No. 9(?) Junkers Ju 88... Found it while looked for the Schiffer copy of the Arado book! It's embarrassing to admit the I even use Librarything.
I have two copies of Famous airplanes of the World No. 9(?) Junkers Ju 88... Found it while looked for the Schiffer copy of the Arado book! It's embarrassing to admit the I even use Librarything.
I got killed buying a couple of the bantam paperbacks while TDY and remembering that I had them at home when staring to read them. Size, and different cover got me alont with probably desperately wanting something to read in the barracks.
Same here been burned a few times with duplicate books. Some I have sent back and others I have given to friends or sold back to Half price book store. I have one or two in both English and German as well and found out same book with just a different cover. Kind of sucks but what do you do.
Two newest arrivals for the library. Already finished reading the Pacific Adversaries and looking forward to Vol 2 to come out. Last I heard was April this year for Vol 2. As for Kens Men part two of the series of just browsing it does not disappoint looks to be just as good and of high quality as the rest of the series.
- Thread starter
- #7,378
Well done there Paul, have been wondering about the Eagles over the Pacific Series, what's it like?
Honestly Wayne, I love the series. I have all his books. They are expensive but to me well worth it for the info that's in them. Below is a link to there web page. Click on the book your interested in and it has 4 to 5 scans of different parts of the books you can read to get an idea on weather you are interested or not. To me they are like Priens books. Lots of info and lots of photos. I cant wait till he finishes the Sun Setters and Grimm Reapers. Please feel free to ask more questions on these and I would be happy to try and answer or scan a page or two.
International Historical Research Associates | Current Projects
I suspect anything that Hickey writes is going to be top-notch. He's not prolific, but is excellent.
