A nicely presented history of fighter development since 1945. The aircraft are presented by country and include concise text with excellent colour photographs. – highly recommended.
NAME: Fact File, Fighter Aircraft since 1945 FILE: R2636 AUTHOR: Frank Schwede PUBLISHER: Pen & Sword BINDING: soft back PAGES: 127 PRICE: £12.99 GENRE: Non Fiction SUBJECT: Cold War, fighter aircraft, subsonic jets, trans-sonic jets, super-sonic jets, air superiority, ground attack, dog fighting, guns, missiles, low observables ISBN: 1-47389-129-9 IMAGE: B2636.jpg BUYNOW: http://tinyurl.com/ycm7hwev LINKS: DESCRIPTION: A nicely presented history of fighter development since 1945. The aircraft are presented by country and include concise text with excellent colour photographs. – highly recommended. The brief history of flight has seen some amazing progress in a series of spurts. WWI saw the military aircraft advance from very fragile unarmed aerial observation posts to effective killing machines with guns, bombs and even unguided rockets. Then, not much happened until Germany began arming for a new world war and a vigorous arms race began. In just a few brief years, fighters advanced from wood and canvas machines with two rifle calibre machine guns, open cockpit biplanes capable of struggling to 200 mph, to all metal monoplanes with up to eight machine guns or canon with enclosed cockpits, oxygen, radio and speeds up to 460 mph. From 1945, further dramatic progress was made with jet powered fighters that carried radar, heavy gun armament, guided missiles and achieved speeds of just over three times the speed of sound. This book covers the jet age and makes a creditable job of it. With books of this type there is a large subject to cover in a compact space which means that not every fighter type can be covered. Inevitably, some readers will wonder why one particular aircraft has been missed out or another type included. The author will have to be a little subjective but this book is balanced and provides an interesting selection of aircraft.