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Find out moreSee below for a selection of the latest books from Aircraft: general interest category. Presented with a red border are the Aircraft: general interest books that have been lovingly read and reviewed by the experts at Lovereading. With expert reading recommendations made by people with a passion for books and some unique features Lovereading will help you find great Aircraft: general interest books and those from many more genres to read that will keep you inspired and entertained. And it's all free!
As we came racing towards the scrap, we could see the Scouts' noses smoking with tracers, while the observers fired back. Suddenly a flame trickled along the side of a Nine, then the petrol tank burst, and she fell a blazing wreck, her wings coming off. Don't let the Hun bag the Nines - good Lord, he'll bag the lot, if we don't stop him, I thought. Gripping and immediate, Williams' vivid descriptions of his raids over the German Rhinelands and Schwartzwald at the helm of his D.H.4 place the reader right in the air with him, relaying the thoughts running through his mind in real time as events unfolded around him. The account begins when the test pilot was stationed with 55 Squadron in Nancy in early 1918, and ends when he is sent home to England, with a Croix de Guerre and a DFC to his name - as fate would have it just as his dearest friend was killed in action. These remarkable memoirs lay undisturbed in a trunk for many years.
It was to be created for one man and one airline but became one of the best and most elegant aircraft ever to grace the skies. Howard Hughes was one of the wealthiest people in the world. He bought control in TWA, the huge American airline, and wanted to make it special. He wanted an aircraft that would give TWA the edge and begin the country's first ever coast-to-coast service carrying twenty passengers and freight. In fact he wanted a lot of them. Hughes discussed it with Lockheed, one of the smaller aviation companies in the USA, but they had grander plans. What they built was the Constellation, one of the greatest airliners of all time. Lockheed Constellation tells the story of the aircraft that was used by more than 100 airlines and air forces in thirty-eight countries; an airliner that came to epitomise the grand and romantic age of flight in the post-war years before the jet engine ruled. It tells of the wartime development which made the USAAF buy the first few aircraft off the production line; the post-war development which would see nine variants built; of the great airlines around the globe that would make the Constellation their first choice flagships; of the amazing technological advances made during development; and of the enduring legacy of this unique aircraft.
In the dark days of World War I, when flying machines, radio, and electronics were infant technologies, the first remotely controlled experimental aircraft took to the skies and unmanned radio controlled 40-foot high-speed Motor Torpedo Boats ploughed the seas in Britain. Developed by the British Army's Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Navy these prototype weapons stemmed from an early form of television demonstrated before the war by Prof. A. M. Low. The remote control systems for these aircraft and boats were invented at RFC Secret Experimental Works commanded by Prof. Low, which was part of the organization of `back-room boys' in the Munitions Inventions Department. These audacious projects of Low and his contemporaries led to the hundreds of remotely controlled Queen Bee aerial targets in the 1930s and hence to all the machines that we now call `drones'. Starting well before WWI and, for the lucky ones, extending well beyond it, the lives of Archibald Low and many of his contemporaries were extraordinary as were the times they lived through. They witnessed many dawns, the coming of the oil and plastics age and of domestic electricity. They experienced vast social improvements and the pasturing of the working horse in favor of motor transport. They were around for the first epic aircraft flights and with the aid of the very technologies that had enabled the development of drones, they saw air travel transformed from the precarious to the routine. It is astonishing that the origins of the first drones are not common knowledge in Britain and that the achievement of these maverick inventors is not commemorated.
Initially designed and built by Hunting Percival, the Jet Provost was a jet-powered development of the Piston Provost trainer, which only entered service five years before its more powerful younger sibling. The Jet Provost became the RAF's first ab initio jet trainer when it entered service in 1955 and would staunchly remain in this crucial role until 1993 when it was replaced by the Turboprop-powered Tucano. During its long service career with the RAF, the Jet Provost progressed through seven marks, although it was only from the T.3 onwards that numbers began to climb. In 1960, Hunting Percival, which was renamed Hunting three years earlier, was taken over by BAC. It was under this new management that the Jet Provost was offered to a world audience with some success in Ceylon, Iraq, Venezuela and Sudan. It was at this point that a dedicated ground-attack version was created in the shape of the Strikemaster, of which 146 were built serving with a number of foreign air forces across the globe.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * At the end of World War II, a band of aces gathered in the Mojave Desert on a Top Secret quest to break the sound barrier-nicknamed The Demon by pilots. The true story of what happened in those skies has never been told. Speed. In 1947, it represented the difference between victory and annihilation. After Hiroshima, the ability to deliver a nuclear device to its target faster than one's enemy became the singular obsession of American war planners. And so, in the earliest days of the Cold War, a highly classified program was conducted on a desolate air base in California's Mojave Desert. Its aim: to push the envelope of flight to new frontiers. There gathered an extraordinary band of pilots, including Second World War aces Chuck Yeager and George Welch, who risked their lives flying experimental aircraft to reach Mach 1, the so-called sound barrier, which pilots called the demon. Shrouding the program in secrecy, the US military reluctantly revealed that the barrier had been broken two months later, after the story was leaked to the press. The full truth has never been fully revealed-until now. Chasing the Demon, from decorated fighter pilot and acclaimed aviation historian Dan Hampton, tells, for the first time, the extraordinary true story of mankind's quest for Mach 1. Here, of course, is twenty-four-year-old Captain Chuck Yeager, who made history flying the futuristic Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound on October 14, 1947. Officially Yeager was the first to achieve supersonic flight, but drawing on new interviews with survivors of the program, including Yeager's former commander, as well as declassified files, Hampton presents evidence that a fellow American-George Welch, a daring fighter pilot who shot down a remarkable sixteen enemy aircraft during the Pacific War-met the demon first, though he was not favored to wear the laurels, as he was now a civilian test pilot and was not flying the Bell X-1. Chasing the Demon sets the race between Yeager and Welch in the context of aviation history, so that the reader can learn and appreciate their accomplishments as never before.
In 2000, the Fleet Air Arm Museum conservation team embarked on an ambitious project to explore what remained of any original paintwork and markings on its WW2 Corsair fighter aircraft. The painstaking, inch-by-inch removal of a 1960s paint layer from the whole aircraft slowly revealed that the entire aircraft remained authentic and original in its 1940s wartime condition. The detailed forensic approach allowed the valuable and (many) unique details to be studied and preserved, allowing the team to chart the aircraft's history from factory to end of Royal Navy service. A unique and fascinating project that resulted in a true time capsule being exposed and preserved.
This is the aircraft that the Battle of Britain hinged upon: the day-fighter that won for the fight for Britain's freedom, without which invasion would have been a near certainty. Yet this vital aircraft, the Hawker Hurricane, is often overshadowed by the Spitfire in many histories of the Second World War. Not so here, though, as Philip Birtles gives a full, detailed account of this important fighter. Complemented by 190 colour and black-and-white illustrations, this book delves into the history of this aircraft, from design and production via the Battle of Britain and Second World War service at home and overseas, right through to rebuilt and preserved Hurricanes still existent. This comprehensive account is everything this aircraft deserves and no aviation or Second World War enthusiast should be without it.
Fighting over the beaches of Dunkirk and in the Battle of Britain, guarding the night skies during the perilous months of the Blitz, pioneering electronic countermeasures, and serving air-sea rescue roles all around our coasts, the Boulton Paul Defiant played a vital part through most of the Second World War, finishing it in the important target-tug role. The Defiant is rightly considered Wolverhampton's highest profile contribution to the war, and the most important product of Boulton Paul Aircraft. This book celebrates the contribution of the Defiant to the war in over 200 illustrations, most from Boulton Paul's own archives, and many never published before. It exposes some of the false myths attached to an aircraft held in great affection by many of its crews.
Among the iconic aircraft of World War II, the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt not only was physically the biggest single-engine fighter, it also had an enormous impact on history. In terms of its combat effectiveness, P-47 fliers destroyed 7,067 hostile aircraft, with about half of those kills recorded during aerial combat. Thunderbolt pilots reported destroying 6,000 enemy tanks, 68,000 trucks, 86,000 railway cars, and 9,000 locomotives. For a single-engine fighter, such a tally is definitely one for the history books. The history of this iconic aircraft is presented through carefully researched archival photos, as well as photographs of preserved examples, thereby illustrating not only the combat use of the Thunderbolt, but also the details of its design and construction. Large, clear photos, coupled with descriptive and informative captions, put the reader on the airfield and in the sky with this historic aircraft. Part of the Legends of Warfare series.
The Grumman F6F Hellcat formed the backbone of America's carrier-based fighter force as the Allies pressed the war toward Japan. Powered by a massive and reliable Pratt & Whitney radial engine, the Hellcat racked up an incredible 19:1 kill ratio against its foes in WWII, and 305 aviators earned ace status while flying the Hellcat. Such famed US naval aces as David McCampbell, Cecil Harris, Eugene Valencia, and Alex Vraciu all flew the Hellcat. In addition to its wing-mounted .50-caliber machine guns, the F6F was equipped to carry bombs as well, allowing pilots to deliver up to 2,000 pounds of bombs on targets. By the time that Hellcat production ended in November 1945, 12,275 examples had rolled off Grumman's Bethpage, Long Island, assembly line. Through carefully researched photos, many never before published, the history and details of this iconic aircraft are revealed. Part of the Legends of Warfare series.
