Reviews of books from the world of aviation. If you're an airhead, and are looking for your next read, you will find it here.
Review by Takis Diakoumis. Helion’s now well established @War series continues to produce some of the best researched and accessible titles across an enormous range of global hotspots through the 20th century. This new one from Krzysztof Dabrowski to be added to the Europe@War set begins to examine the crucial development and initial operations of... Continue Reading →
Review by Takis Diakoumis. When this latest epic volume from Schiffer and Brad Elward arrived, I was absolutely stunned. Weighing in at almost 700 pages, this massive book is without doubt the most comprehensive publicly available study of the US Navy’s TOPGUN program I have ever had the pleasure to read. Schiffer Military books have... Continue Reading →
Review by Stuart Forth. The Spitfire, Lancaster and Vulcan are all legendary British aircraft and, as such, have copious amounts of books written about them. The same is true for that icon of Cold War aviation, the English Electric Lightning. Quite rightly, the people who flew, serviced or just witnessed this fire-breathing thoroughbred firsthand wax... Continue Reading →
Review by Takis Diakoumis. It's sometimes hard to imagine the making of a fighter pilot, at least for someone like myself who has been in quiet awe of anyone who’s had the tenacity and aptitude to have those precious wings pinned to their chest. I would spy them at airshows as a child and into... Continue Reading →
Review by Takis Diakoumis. For more than eighty years Pavel Sukhoi and his design bureau has been at the cutting edge of Soviet and, later, Russian aviation. While the continued evolution and success of the more recent Flanker fighter aircraft from Sukhoi has elevated the bureau to the top of the Russian group among the... Continue Reading →
Review by Stuart Forth. The F-4 and A-10 are two vastly different aircraft. The former is a supersonic, afterburning, multi-role weapons system that, although not pretty, looks menacing from any angle. On the other hand, the A-10 is a slow, ungainly and ‘Butt Ugly’ (author’s words, not mine) machine, built around a massive gun and... Continue Reading →
Review by Takis Diakoumis. This recent addition to the rapidly growing Legends of Warfare series from Schiffer Publishing covers the classic early American jet and combat veteran from Republic, the F-84. Tracing the story of the F-84, author Ken Neubeck walks us through early experimental jet engines and the emergence of swept-wing designs. The F-84 was especially... Continue Reading →
Review by Stuart Forth. If, like me, you still look skywards at the sound of an approaching aeroplane, and you stand in wonder at the sight of a machine passing across the sky before you, then this is the book for you. In Fast Jets to Spitfires, the author, Ron Lloyd, takes you along for a... Continue Reading →
Review by Stuart Forth. In the spring of 1952, near the village of Elmpt on the German/Dutch border, work began to clear the forest to make way for what was to become RAF Brüggen. Over the next year much hard toil, by RAF airfield construction crews and local German civilians, transformed this patch of woodland... Continue Reading →
Review by Takis Diakoumis. Initially declared neutral, as the only defeated power not to have received some territorial award at the end of the First World War, Bulgaria hoped for some gains as a collaborator with the Third Reich and fully signed member of the Axis. As Nazi Germany began preparations to invade Yugoslavia and... Continue Reading →
Flight Line Book Review 