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Re: Favorite Aircraft History Books?
I guess this thread proves that the topic can meander, despite the format used! IIRC, the question was: "What's your favorite aircraft book?" Emphasis was on the nuts and bolts.
As my subject of interest is the Me 262, Classic's 4-volume opus on the subject has to be the current winner. While it does include operational material, its strength really is in its presentation of the technical details of this aircraft. Smith & Creek have presented about every known photo as of the time of printing, a significant feat, indeed.
On the downside are the lack of references and adequate indexing, plus a certain disjointedness attempting to publish an aircraft history over a number of years as new material is being discovered, forcing a bit of revisiting of subject matter. And, in an interesting twist, to actually get all of the pertinent drawings, one had to also purchase Forsyth's JV44.
I can't help but being drawn into the discussion of "nuts & bolts" versus "operational history". The argument seems to be very narrowly drawn, as there is far more to an aircraft's history than these two subjects. In the case of the Me 262, what really has drawn my interest is Germany's struggle to actually get this aircraft ready for production and the decisions having to be made about how and where to produce it. Overlaid upon this is the war situation, itself, what with deteriorating transport, fuel, and essential material supply.
Some here find the operational history of paramount interest, i.e., in the case of the Me 262, how successful was it in combat? Chronologies of day to day combat, such as Foreman & Harvey's Me 262 Combat Diary, may lose sight of the big picture, giving all of the nitty-gritty details of individual combats with claims & losses, but not the overall impact nor the relative impact versus the conduct of the rest of the war.
As for "nuts and bolts" books, hopefully they have their place, too, as I am currently so involved in support of a super-scale model kit effort that the lure of doing a book utilizing the same material is enticing. The key question, of course, is is there a real interest out there to see what is under the skin of an aircraft?
Regards,
Richard
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