Favorite Aircraft History Books?

[Dick Powers]

Originally Posted by Jukka Juutinen

I disagree on Pegg. It was a reasonable effort that failed pretty hard on the technical aspects.

Although I might disagree with your evaluation of the technical aspects, the overall package is successful.



What is interesting, and I have ranted on this before, that many ships have far better books written on them. E.g. the Anatomy of the Ship srs have extremely detailed design and technical coverage. It is also very odd that many WW One aircraft have much better books devoted to them than those of the WW Two. Where is e.g. a thorough (with performance curves, design analysis, handling info, pilot reports, material data etc) books on the Marauder, He 111, A-20 etc.?

Ships may be a different problem. Each ship is unique, or at most, only a few are built. Although the design and construction may be much more complicated than for an aircraft prototype, at least prior to the last 30 or so years. I believe where aircraft histories get complicated is when a single book tries to deal with a design having tens of factory variations, twice that of field variations and production that runs into the thousands. trying to make sense of this must be a challenge.

BTW - I saw recently that Crowood will issue one book on the A-20 family, another on the A-26 family. Although Crowood's books can be derivative, sometimes they can produce a gem; Kev Darling's book on the Typhoon, Tempest and Sea Fury is very good.

I certainly agree that flight test data, pilot reports, and similar information should be inlcuded.