Book Review: MiG-29 Fulcrum Fighter Pilot's Flight Operating Instructions

MiG-29 Fulcrum Fighter Pilot's Flight Operating Instructions
Los Angeles, CA: Periscope Film, 2007
Category: Aviation History / Aerospace Engineering


Rating: 4-Stars


To understand the true value of this volume, and to place it into context, it is important to point out what this book is not.  This book is not a history book, making no attempt to describe the development history or deployment of the Mikoyan MiG-29, nor does it contain any pilot accounts from operational deployment of the MiG-29.  Further, there is no explanation provided for the technical diagrams that it does contain, most if not all of which will have little meaning or value for the unprepared.

What this volume is, on the other hand, is an English language flight manual for the operation of the MiG-29, as prepared from former East German Luftwaffe documents by the U.S. Air Force in coordination with the German Luftwaffe.  It contains a lot of mundane descriptions that were necessary for pilots and ground crew to service and operate the early-generation MiG-29 fighters that the newly reunited German Luftwaffe inherited from their Warsaw Pact counterparts.  Details like fuel tank arrangements, emergency procedures and the like that were part of routine training for the NATO pilots who flew and evaluated the last Frontal Aviation fighter produced by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

This volume also, however, contains a wealth of detail of interest to more technically inclined aircraft historians, or to aerospace engineers: descriptions of the cockpit arrangement; and performance data - everything from take-off distances, to climb rates, to flight envelope limits are all illustrated in detail.  These are the sort of performance parameters that would have been closely guarded during the Cold War, and which provide unique insight into both the capabilities and limitations of this warplane.

So for the casual reader of aircraft history, this book probably holds little of interest.  There are no explanations to accompany the text, and little means to interpret the significance of the contents.  For those with a more technical or engineering background, however, this volume contains a wealth of data available nowhere else.

Book Review: Warbird Tech Series: Mikoyan MiG-29

Yefim Gordon and Peter Davison
Warbird Tech Series: Mikoyan MiG-29
Hinckley, UK: Midland Publishing, 2005
Category: Aviation History


Rating: 3-Stars


On the on hand, this is not a bad book, by any means.  It contains a lot of detailed information regarding the development versions and various features and customers for the MiG-29.  At 104 pages, with lots of black and white photographs, this is a fairly complete retelling of the MiG-29's history.

Just one year later, however, a more complete compilation of the MiG-29's development and operational history would be published by one of these same authors - Yefim Gordon - under this same publisher, capturing much of the same material and expanding upon it immeasurably.  At 512 pages, Yefim Gordon's Famous Russian Aircraft: Mikoyan MiG-29 would completely eclipse this earlier work.

So again, the Warbird Tech Series title on the MiG is not a bad book at all, and has much to recommend it.  Anyone who doesn't own a copy of Yefim Gordon's later compendium will likely be pleased with this look into this pivotal Cold War program.  But it also doesn't add to the story behind this aircraft, beyond everything that the later title covers.

Book Review: Jane's How to Fly and Fight in the Mikoyan MiG-29

Jon Lake
Jane's How to Fly and Fight in the Mikoyan MiG-29 Fulcrum
New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997
Category: Aviation History

Rating: 4-Stars


Jon Lake's slim volume covering the MiG-29 is nowhere near as complete Yefim Gordon's later, exhaustive tome on the subject, nor was it ever meant to be.  Written long before many key documents were available in the West, Jon Lake's profile of the Soviet Union's last lightweight, Frontal Aviation fighter represents a key snapshot from the mid-1990s, in the years shortly after the Cold War had ended.

What makes this particular book stand out, even decades later, is its collection of first-hand pilot interviews, conducted with aviators who had actually trained and flown in the aircraft.  This includes extensive accounts from a former Soviet (Russian) pilot, a U.S. exchange pilot who flew and assessed the aircraft in East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a West German Luftwaffe pilot who was charged with integrating the type into the new, united German air force.  The candor of these pilots, and their differing perspectives on both the strengths and weaknesses of the aircraft is what makes this volume unique.

For the Soviet pilot who had never known anything other than East Bloc warplanes, the praise heaped on the aircraft is well deserved.  The MiG-29 had succeeded in delivering the point air defense fighter that was a key part in a much larger, Soviet air defense system.  For the U.S. pilot, coming from years in the cockpit of the F-16, the lack of human engineering and the very poor cockpit design were key limiters to the effectiveness of the MiG, although he also retained a healthy respect for the MiG's short-range, high-off-boresight heat seeking missiles.  And for the Luftwaffe pilot, the type's limited range and lack of multirole capabilities makes the airplane's integration into the West German fleet a constant struggle.

In other respects, the text of this book has been overtaken by other resources that have helped to flesh out the technical picture for this important aircraft type.  Taken together, however, the cross section of observations offered by the pilots themselves - faithfully rendered by author Jon Lake - makes this a unique and invaluable look at this important aircraft, more than compensating for minor shortcomings elsewhere.

Book Review: Air Combat: An Oral History of Fighter Pilots

Robert F. Dorr
Air Combat: An Oral History of Fighter Pilots
New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2006
Category: U.S. Air Force - History

Rating: 5-Stars


For those who enjoy first-hand accounts from the cockpit, Robert Dorr brings us a collection from some of the best.  Chronicling stories of U.S. fighter aviation from Pearl Harbor to the War on Terror, Dorr has collected an array of stories that illustrate the common threads that have connected the world of fighter aviation across six decades of flight.

Each chapter is devoted to a particular story or incident, beginning with the background leading up to the engagement, followed by the pilot's description of the events as they took place, and concluding with a description of the aircraft involved.  From Zeros to MiGs, from piston powered warbirds to the first jet-on-jet aerial duel, Dorr provides an assortment of stories that leave you hungry for more.

Book Review: Advanced Tactical Fighter to F-22 Raptor

David C. Aronstein, Michael J. Hirschberg and Albert C. Piccirillo
Advanced Tactical Fighter to F-22 Raptor
Reston, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1998
Category: U.S. Air Force - Aircraft

Rating: 5-Stars


The F-22 set a standard for air dominance that no fighter either before, or since is likely to ever come close to approaching.  Relative to its peers, the F-22 combines superior thrust-to-weight ratio with extremely low wing loading, to deliver an advantage in acceleration, maximum speed, and turn rate, together with advantages in sensors and low observables technology.  Taken together, the F-22 dominates any opponent either existing or on the drawing board to a degree that no other air superiority platform has ever done before.

Advanced Tactical Fighter to F-22 Raptor tells the story of the F-22 from the pre-development studies, through the development phase, to the eventual fly-off between the YF-22 and YF-23.  This is the story of this remarkable airplane from the point of view of the engineering professional, with attention paid to the many trade studies and technology development programs that contributed to its eventual success.  The book chronicles the wind tunnel studies, weapons integration, engine test and development program, avionics integration, and many more elements that were part of this program.

This combination makes this book unparalleled in the retelling of the F-22 saga.  This is not a picture book, although it does include a wide number of black-and-white illustrations detailing the test schedule and design decisions that had to be made.  Rather, this is a unique look, that conveys just how vast and comprehensive a modern fighter development program is.

Book Review: Saab Gripen: Sweden's 21st Century Multi-role Aircraft

Gerard Keijsper
Saab Gripen: Sweden's 21st Century Multi-role Aircraft
Hinkley, UK: Midland Publishing, 2003
Category: Aviation History

Rating: 5-Stars


Many of us are familiar with Sweden's prized weapons independence and arms export industry - the product of sitting-out two world wars as a non-aligned entity.  The details behind how such a complex weapons program as the Saab JAS-39 Gripen came to be developed and reach production, however, are often less well known.

Despite attempts to portray the JAS-39 Gripen as a strictly Swedish product, this book pays homage to just how much of the technology and components for the Gripen are actually imported from other nations with their own, well financed aerospace programs.  The engine of course, is assembled in Sweden as the Volvo RM12.  But it was designed in the United States by General Electric as a version of the F404, and many of the key components in its assembly are still imported from the United States.  The composite wings were designed and developed in the UK, before production eventually shifted to Sweden.  The gun is supplied by Germany.  The fuel system by France.  This multinational supply base was actually part of the key as to why the Gripen was able to reach production at an affordable cost - unlike programs such as India's Tejas for example, which originally attempted to develop all of the necessary components and technology in-house, leading to huge cost overruns and decades of delays before outside technological assistance was finally sought to complete the program.

The book also provides a comprehensive history for the development trades that went into the Gripen, including sketches for the early concept studies that evaluated different design options - some of them radically different from the final aircraft.  All of this is supplemented by an excellent assortment of full color photography, illustrating the development, flight test, and operational experience of the program.

The one item I would have liked to have seen added to the book, would have been a comprehensive weights and performance roll-up, something that Saab has traditionally been cagey about supplying openly.  The book includes statistics for maximum take-off weight, for example, but not for the empty weight or internal fuel weight of the aircraft, or for its effective combat radius.  Nonetheless, Gerard Keijsper has succeeded in producing what is otherwise a fairly comprehensive history behind this highly successful fighter program.

Book Review: Designed for the Kill

Mike Spick
Designed for the Kill: The Jet Fighter - Development and Experience
Shrewsbury, UK: Airlife Publishing Ltd, 1995
Category: Aviation History

Rating: 4-Stars


Designed for the Kill was in many ways a precurser to Mike Spick's later title, Modern Fighters.  The primary difference is that Designed for the Kill is focused squarely around the historical development and technology behind modern fighter aircraft, whereas Modern Fighters attempts to focus more of its attention on individual aircraft.  This earlier title also lacks many of the color illustrations that benefited its later counterpart.

Nonetheless, Designed for the Kill is in many ways the better of the two titles, emphasizing as it does an overview of the technological elements that have gone into the jet fighters that fly today rather than attempting to reproduce individual aircraft statistics that Jane's has already covered in far greater detail.  The individual chapters examine such important milestones as the development of fly-by-wire technology, the emergence of the canard generation of fighters, short take-off and vertical landing technology, and the eventual emergence of low-observable technologies.  As a technology overview, this title is perhaps best compared to Klaus Huenecke's Modern Combat Aircraft Design - coming in a close second to Huenecke's technical explanations, but offering a better historical context from which to understand the evolution of the technology and its application today.

All told, a worthy addition to a modern aviation library.

Book Review: Brassey's Modern Fighters

Mike Spick
Brassey's Modern Fighters
Washington, DC: Brassey's Inc., 2000
Category: Aviation History

Rating: 4-Stars


Mike Spick has been among the most prolific aviation authors from the 1980s through the turn of the century, publishing a variety of books on individual aviation topics or on combat aircraft in general.  This particular volumes stands out among his later works as one of his more refined publications.

What makes Modern Fighters a worthwhile addition to the aviation literature is not its coverage of individual aircraft - although it does have a series of chapters dealing with a number of them - but rather its illustrated explanations for fighter aircraft technology.  Everything from the workings of radar guided missiles to the application of stealth coatings and radar absorbing materials are discussed in turn.  Cockpit arrangements, radar display symbology, weapons selection - in all, a fairly complete overview of the technology that goes into making these machines function.  The illustrations for each of these technical elements are colorful and well executed, supplemented by a variety of color photographs for each aircraft type.

The amount of detail provided for each individual aircraft surveyed is, in contrast, only cursory.  Not nearly as complete, for example, as what could be found in an edition of Jane's All the World's Aircraft.  The chapter on the F-16, for example, fails to explain how this aircraft has evolved through its different block builds, as avionics systems and payload capability were gradually added.  The Block 52+ F-16 models delivered today have capabilities unimagined for the little aircraft when the first Block 10 F-16s rolled out in the 1970s.  But the explanations for the technologies employed by these and other aircraft largely makes up for these deficiencies, making this book worthwhile despite its shortcomings elsewhere.

Book Review: The United States Air Force in Korea

Robert F. Futrell
The United States Air Force in Korea
Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1996
Category: U.S. Air Force - History

Rating: 4-Stars


First published in 1961, revised in 1983 and republished again in 1991 and 1996, Robert Futrell's account of the Korean air war is undoubtedly the most comprehensive available.  Some 823 pages in length, this is the detailed account of the Korean air campaign, battle-by-battle.

Futrell's account is by no means light reading.  Replete with maps, operational details on the strategies and preparations to win the war, Futrell's comprehensive history reflects the long, hard-fought war that Korea was.  Although short on first-hand pilot accounts, Futrell describes in detail each phase of the war, focusing equally on the wins and the losses.  This is the honest picture of the air campaign in the "forgotten war."  A total of 1,040,708 allied sorties.  Some 467,000 tons of ordnance dropped by the US Air Force alone.  Over a thousand allied aircraft lost in battle.  The breadth and magnitude of this air war often goes unappreciated by succeeding generations.  Futrell's account is not light reading.  It is the record of an immense air campaign intended for the serious historian, and a reminder for how hard-fought this war really was.

Book Review: Sabres Over MiG Alley

Kenneth P. Werrell
Sabres Over MiG Alley
Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005
Category: U.S. Air Force - History

Rating: 5-Stars


The Korean War saw the world's first jet-on-jet fighter engagements, with stories of the match-up between the F-86 Sabre and MiG-15 becoming legendary.  Kenneth Werrell has compiled a most readable history of this exchange, combining the story of the evolution of the F-86 and the air war over Korea, with first-hand pilot accounts that help to bring that era to life.  Each pilot account includes a profile of the pilot, and his wartime experience, further cementing the picture.

There have been a wide array of books on the Korean War and the Korean air war.  What sets Werrell's book apart is its steady flow, interlacing between the technical story behind the evolution of the F-86, and the pilot experience in the war.  His book is not as all-encompassing as Robert Futrell's The United States Air Force in Korea, for example, but it's far more accessible to the reader.  It also does not have the broad expanse of photography that some books tend to emphasize, but it does have just enough photographs to help the reader to visualize the airplane and the era in which it flew.  Taken together, Werrell has assembled what is probably the most balanced book available chronicling the experience of the F-86 squadrons over Korea.

Book Review: The People's Liberation Army as Organization

James C. Mulvenon and Andrew N.D. Yang, Editors
The People's Liberation Army as Organization
Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2002
Category: People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF)

Rating: 4-Stars


Although it has become somewhat dated, I would be remiss if I did not mention this particular volume on the history of China's armed forces.  The People's Liberation Army as Organization is a comprehensive collection on the development of the PLA as a fighting force: it's organization, history, and corporate culture.  Although this volume has been overtaken by events in the past decade, it nonetheless provides a touchstone for understanding how the PLA is structured, and how its modern military school of thought came into being.

Divided into sections that deal with individual chapters in China's modern military history, as well as sections that focus on individual branches of China's armed forces, The People's Liberation Army as Organization combines essays from an array of specialists on Chinese military developments to deliver a broad picture of where the PLA has been, and what direction it is heading towards.  At 634 pages in length, this volume offers the most comprehensive picture currently out there of the bureaucracy, history and corporate culture of the PLA.

Book Review: Chinese Warfighting: The PLA Experience Since 1949

Mark A. Ryan, David M. Finkelstein and Michael A. McDevitt, Editors
Chinese Warfighting: The PLA Experience Since 1949
Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2003
Category: People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF)

Rating: 4-Stars


It has often been said that generals have a tendency to re-fight the last war.  Human nature tends to drive us to become creatures of habit, re-visiting past episodes, good or bad, that we know so well.  This is why a book such as this, which reviews the history of China's war fighting experience, is crucial to understanding the corporate culture of China's military today.

China won the Great War against Japan, and indeed all of the smaller wars that it has fought since, as wars of attrition.  In these confrontations, it was a question of superior Chinese numbers that negated any technological advantage that China's adversaries (such as in the Korean War) may have possessed.  This was why, up until the early 1990s, the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) was so under-funded relative to similar armed forces abroad.  The value of a modern air force, equipped with modern munitions, was unrecognized.

All of this did, of course, change during the 1990s and afterwards, as the Chinese political and military establishments absorbed the lessons of the 1991 Gulf War and as China's burgeoning economy fueled its military expansion.  But the scars from those decades of neglect still remain.

In the Korean War, the first war that the PLAAF participated in, the purpose of the Chinese air force was to provide protection against opposing fighters.  The concept that air power might make a significant impact against opposing ground forces was never seriously considered.  This experience led directly to the lack of air power as a substantive component during the 1979 border war between China and Vietnam.  The PLAAF was charged with protecting Chinese skies from a potential Vietnamese counter-attack, not with assisting to prosecute the war on the ground.

How much this old mentality has truly been broken is still not entirely clear.  There has been significant investment in the past two decades in modern aircraft and missiles for the PLAAF, but whether the training, tactics and weapons employed have fully adjusted to new realities remains an open question.

Which is why, again, learning from history and understanding how the People's Liberation Army, and the PLAAF evolved into what they are today remains so vitally important.  This particular book contains a series of essays, collected from scholars in the field, examining China's individual wars and border skirmishes, as well as the evolution of different branches within China's armed forces.  Taken together, it's one of the best historical collections available on this subject.

Book Review: Chinese Military Modernization

Anthony H. Cordesman and Martin Kleiber
Chinese Military Modernization: Force Development and Strategic Capabilities
Washington, DC: CSIS Press, 2007
Category: People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF)

Rating: 4-Stars


This book is in many respects the natural extension of earlier works, such as the Rand Corporation's study, China's Air Force Enters the 21st Century - featuring a wide selection of tables and charts illustrating the pace of China's military modernization over the past two decades.

Published by the CSIS Press (Center for Strategic and International Studies), and authored in part by Anthony Cordesman - who has written widely on military modernization and strategic studies issues focused on the Middle East and elsewhere - Chinese Military Modernization provides the larger picture to China's military recapitalization in the early 21st century.

At the time that this volume was published, the pace and focus of China's military modernization had become unmistakable.  China's military has been transformed from a force structure based purely around quantity, to one that has embraced modern technology and force multipliers.  These trends are clearly documented in this text.

What is lacking from this summary, of course, are the details behind individual weapons programs, training programs, and the capabilities that these translate into.  Cordesman's study was not intended to provide that level of granularity.  What it does do, however, is to provide the larger, strategic picture, documenting the rapid modernization of China's military that has alarmed many in the West and in the Far East - in some cases with due cause and in others without reference to the region's historic realities.

All told, Chinese Military Modernization provides an important reference for trends that continue to this day.

Book Review: China's Air Force Enters the 21st Century

Kenneth W. Allen, Glenn Krumel and Jonathan D. Pollack
China's Air Force Enters the 21st Century
Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1995
Category: People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF)

Rating: 3-Stars


Despite the fact that this particular Rand study has since been overtaken by events in the two decades since it was first published, it nonetheless stands out as an important document on the status and direction of the PLAAF at a crossroads in its modern development.

This particular study was published shortly after the PLAAF began the modernization push that has continued to be a feature on the global geopolitical stage even to this day.  In the mid-1990s, Western strategists were only just beginning to wake up to the implications of China's growing economic muscle - and its political and military ramifications.  China was, at the time, still widely derided by many as a backward, third world economy in the same vein as North Korea or other failed dictatorships.

To understand the importance of this transformation, it is essential, however, to understand the historic context of these events.  China was never, as some have attempted to portray it, a lesser clone of the Soviet Union.  Communist China did not have the same visions of world empire and domination that had led to decades of global Cold War between the Soviets and the West.  Historically speaking, China's focus has been most often internal - maintaining order across a vast territory with different regional and cultural challenges - or from time-to-time regional - as during China's border war with Vietnam in 1979.

Communist China's potential had long been hamstrung by a combination of bureaucratic ineptitude, combined with a fundamental lack of understanding for how modern technology - and air power in particular - had changed the face of war.  These two, historical limitations, however, came unhinged in the early 1990s.  Part of the story surrounded a series of economic reforms, which encouraged foreign investment and free enterprise as a means to jump-start the Chinese economy while retaining central control over select industries.  This economic boom was what provided the fuel for China's defense modernization at the turn of the century.  The other key component was the startling wake-up call that was provided by the swift U.S. and allied victory of the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq and Kuwait.  Up until this time, the Chinese military leadership had been confident that the U.S. and its allies would become bogged down in a prolonged engagement with Iraq: a war of attrition similar to the Iran-Iraq war of the preceding decade, and for which the U.S. was expected to have no stomach.  The decisive manner in which the U.S. defeated the Iraqi military, and the role that air power played in that victory, came as a startling wake-up call to the Chinese leadership.

By the mid-1990s when this particular book was published, therefore, the Chinese military had already begun to phase out its older aircraft types in favor of more modern jet fighters purchased from post-Cold War Russia.  The parallel efforts to develop indigenous Chinese warplanes and missiles, such as the J-10 fighter and PL-8 and PL-10 air-to-air missiles, were still only rumors, however, at the time that this particular Rand study was completed.

What this particular book does do, is to document in meticulous detail trends in Chinese air force procurement and deployment, providing an essential piece of the historical record that later writers could draw upon as China's modernization efforts gradually came into the public view.  The graphs and tables of Chinese aircraft production, and the descriptions of the sometimes painful evolution of Chinese industry and know-how, mark this book as an exceptional document for its time.  This book therefore stands as an important resource for later researchers and writers to draw on, when attempting to place events in the early 21st century into a larger historic context - which again is why I have chosen to review this book here, rather than ignoring it entirely as so many of its contemporaries on this subject deserve to be.

Book Review: World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines

Bill Gunston
The World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines
Somerset, UK: Patrick Stephens Limited, 1998
Category: Aviation History

Rating: 3-Stars


First produced in 1986, with its fourth edition published in 1998, The World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines was in many ways a direct predecessor to Bill Gunston's later book, The Development of Jet and Turbine Aero Engines - despite the overlap in publication dates between the two (the latter being first produced in 1995 and continuing with new editions through 2006).  Much of the same text was carried over from the earlier Encyclopedia into the later work.

Where the two books differ, is in their coverage and explanation for the developmental history for jet engines.  This subject was completely omitted from the earlier work, making The World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines a less compelling story.  My advice for someone perusing through the used book market would be to gravitate towards the newer Development of Jet and Turbine Aero Engines as a more complete volume.

Book Review: Turbojet History and Development 1930-1960 - Volume 2

Anthony L. Kay
Turbojet History and Development 1930-1960 - Volume 2
Wiltshire, UK: Crowood Press, 2007
Category: Aviation History

Rating: 4-Stars


Whereas the first volume in Anthony Kay's Turbjet History focused on jet engine development in the UK and Germany, the second volume covers developments in the U.S., Soviet Union, France, and elsewhere.

Again, this is a huge subject to try and cover, and the amount of detail that Kay can go into on U.S. jet engine development, for example, will naturally pale next to that provided by more dedicated texts such as James St. Peter's History of Aircraft Gas Turbine Engine Development in the United States.  It nonetheless accurately portrays the early days of jet engine development in both the United States, and the many would-be contenders that attempted - and often failed - to make a lasting impression in this hugely competitive market.

A couple points bear mentioning that stand out from this book.  The first, is the degree to which the early jet engine developers throughout the world relied heavily on the designs and technologies developed by the very first jet engine developers in the UK and Germany.  The earliest jet engine designs to be manufactured by both the United States and Soviet Union, for example, were engines developed by Rolls-Royce and subsequently built under license in the United States or duplicated by the Soviet Union.  The early development work in Germany, meanwhile, would go on to inform both U.S. and Soviet development of axial-flow compressors.

An excellent example of this flow of knowledge and experience is afforded by post-war developments in France.  At the end of World War II, Germany had multiple development houses pursing jet engine technologies and development.  The developers at BMW, however, were behind their counterparts at Junkers and Heinkel by the end of the war, and were consequently overlooked by U.S. and Soviet officials who combed through post-war Germany to recruit German engineers to work on their own post-war programs.  The French government was therefore able to recruit the jet engine development team from BMW to develop the Atar engine - the turbojet that would power French fighters and bombers throughout the 1950s and 1960s.  The continued success of France's Snecma, which exists to this day, would have been unthinkable without this early injection of jet engine experience.

The other element that stands out from Anthony Kay's work is the diverse pattern of jet engine development undertaken within the post-war Soviet Union.  While the very first Soviet jet fighter engines were direct duplicates of Rolls-Royce designs produced by Klimov, independent development work at Tumansky (much of it informed by German experience in axial-flow compressors) would eventually supercede the more limited stable of designs offered by Klimov.  Copying British designs allowed the Russians to get a head start on jet aviation.  But to develop a next generation of technology of their own required that the Soviet developers learn-out the design process themselves - the hard way, with all of the painful lessons that this entailed.

Taken together, Anthony Kay's book provides an important addition to the historical record on a subject that merits more attention that it is generally awarded.

Book Review: Turbojet History and Development 1930-1960 - Volume 1

Anthony L. Kay
Turbojet History and Development 1930-1960 - Volume 1
Wiltshire, UK: Crowood Press, 2007
Category: Aviation History

Rating: 4-Stars


Anthony Kay has made a noble attempt to capture the opening chapters to the jet engine revolution that reshaped modern aviation.  This is a huge story to attempt to tackle, and Kay's book comes as close to anyone's to taking it all in.

Volume 1 of Anthony Kay's Turbojet History focuses on the United Kingdom (Rolls-Royce) and Germany, the two co-originators of the jet engine.  A couple of points in this story are deserving of additional mention.  First, is that in the years preceding World War II, developers in the UK had a clear advantage.  Frank Whittle's conceptual design work and early rig testing should have placed British developers well ahead of the Germans in the successful development of a practical jet engine.  What happened of course, as many of us know, is that the British authorities and British industry failed to grasp the significance of Whittle's concepts.  Rather than press onward to capitalize on Whittle's early work, the small team of engineers and technicians at Power Jets struggled to secure the necessary resources to convert their ideas into a functional engine.  The fact that they succeeded at all was the product of dogged determination - not brilliant leadership on the part of British aviation authorities at the time.  In contrast, German industry, and in particular Ernst Heinkel recognized early-on the potential behind the jet engine concept and provided Hans von Ohain with all of the resources necessary to overtake the earlier British development work.

The second, most striking point was the divergent reaction between the British and German industry and government officials once the first jet engines produced by Sir Frank Whittle and Hans von Ohain had actually flown.  In the UK, government bureaucrats conspired to bring the jet engine under the full ownership and control of state-owned interests at Rolls-Royce, centralizing all future development for jet engines in the UK.  Germany, on the other hand, saw an explosion of competing design houses that attempted to replicate the early success of Hans von Ohain's jet engine, and improve upon it.  Although the first jet aircraft to fly had been produce by Heinkel, the first practical, production jet fighters would be produced by Messerschmidt, flying on engines produced by Junkers - with competing engines under development by a team at BMW.

The modern, jet-powered world of aviation that we know today owes its origins to the early jet engine developers in the UK and Germany.  Every other jet engine developer to follow would begin their journey as a student of the accomplishments and hard-won lessons of these early developers.  To this end, Anthony Kay's book offers an essential window into a chapter of aviation history that is too often neglected.

Book Review: History of Aircraft Gas Turbine Engine Development in the United States

James St. Peter
The History of Aircraft Gas Turbine Engine Development in the United States - A Tradition of Excellence
Atlanta, GA: International Gas Turbine Institute, 1999
Category: Aviation History

Rating: 4-Stars


The development of the gas turbine has been pivotal to the development of modern aviation - yet has under-appreciated by many, even within the aerospace industry.  The technology that goes into a modern jet engine evolved across decades of development, on a road marked by both stunning successes and tragic failures.  This book attempts to chronicle not only the development of the U.S. jet engine industry, but also the evolution of the underlying technology that goes into the modern jet engine.

The book begins with the humble beginnings of U.S. jet engine manufacture, which drew heavily on designs developed previously by Rolls-Royce in the U.K., and built subsequently under license in the U.S.  In those early days of the jet engine, it seemed as if every aircraft and engine manufacturer expected to be part of the new jet engine age.  Lockheed - best known as an aircraft developer - had their own jet engine division.  Curtiss-Wright, which had developed both aircraft and piston-powered engines during World War II, likewise had its own jet engine department.  One by one, however, virtually all of these early developers fell to the wayside, leaving a handful of dedicated jet engine manufacturers in this highly competitive field.

A good example of the lessons of these early attempts is afforded by Westinghouse Aviation.  As a manufacturer of steam turbines for power generation, Westinghouse (like General Electric) had a natural advantage at the dawn of the jet age.  Westinghouse developed the J30 - the first successful jet engine to be designed independently by a U.S. manufacturer.  For the first half-decade of jet engine development, it appeared as if Westinghouse was on its way to becoming a leading player in this market, winning one contract after another for the supply of jet engines for U.S. Navy fighter aircraft.  All of this came tumbling down, however, when Westinghouse failed to deliver on the J40 - an engine slated to power a host of new U.S. Navy fighters during the 1950s.  As the new, higher-thrust engines demanded ever increasing compression ratios, Westinghouse discovered that they had failed to invest in the underlying technologies necessary to remain competitive.  Westinghouse subsequently exited the jet engine market, never to return.

James St. Peter's historic survey consequently chronicles just how complex and challenging the design of a jet engine truly is.  Today, there are only two manufacturers for high thrust, high performance jet engines remaining in the United States - plus two other manufacturers best known in the smaller, business jet marketplace.  These consist of General Electric and Pratt & Whitney Aircraft on the high-thrust end of the market, with Honeywell (formerly Garrett) and Rolls-Royce's North American Division (formerly Allison) in the business jet engine market.  To this day, the development of a modern, high performance jet engine constitutes a technical challenge which few in the world have the resources to master.

Book Review: Development of Jet and Turbine Aero Engines

Bill Gunston
The Development of Jet and Turbine Aero Engines
Somerset, UK: Patrick Stephens Limited, 2006 (4th Edition)
Category: Aerospace Engineering / Aviation History

Rating: 4-Stars


Bill Gunston has been the most prolific aviation author in the UK for much of the past fifty years.  Most of the books that he writes clearly fall into the historical aviation category, although some - such as this one - straddle between the world of aircraft design and aircraft history.

This particular book is divided into two parts: the first on "How Gas Turbines Work" and the second devoted to "The Historical Story."  At face value, someone might expect the first half of the book to closely mirror Klaus Huenecke's book, Jet Engines: Fundamentals of Theory, Design and Operation - and in fact, Bill Gunston does cover some of the same territory, reviewing the different components of the gas turbine and how each functions.  In practice, however, Gunston's book is less detailed than Huenecke's book on this score - with fewer diagrams and even less mathematics (if that was possible).

Where Gunston's book excels, however, is in its historical sweep of the evolution of jet engine technology.  Whereas Huenecke's text provides the theoretical foundation without fully describing how today's gas turbines came to differ from their predecessors from even a few decades ago, Gunston's book provides less of the theoretical description and far more explanation for how jet engine technology has changed and evolved across the decades.

Gunston's book therefore serves a complimentary function, fleshing in the historical context that books by Huenecke and others of a more engineering-oriented bent, often leave out.  The fact that The Development of Jet and Turbine Aero Engines is now in its 4th edition (the first came out back in 1995) speaks to the enduring role of this book in fulfilling a gap in the available literature.

Book Review: British Secret Projects: Jet Fighters Since 1950

Tony Buttler
British Secret Projects: Jet Fighters Since 1950
Hinkley, UK: Midland Publishing, 2000
Category: Aviation History

Rating: 4-Stars


As one of the originators of the jet engine, it is only natural that the United Kingdom should have a rich history of jet aircraft design - many of which were actually built and flown as demonstrators or prototypes, and many more of which never made it that far.  This book provides a survey of these aircraft - the ones that didn't quite make it into production or which were the forerunners of later, production fighters.

Drawing on original archives and preserved aircraft, this book chronicles the forerunners of such aircraft as the Harrier, the Panavia Tornado, the Eurofighter Typhoon, even the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.  All of these aircraft had all, or at least part of their origins in the UK-developed concepts and flight test articles that preceded them.  The Typhoon, for example, underwent a series of concept iterations - even prior to the flight of the British/German EAP (Experimental Aircraft Program) that was its most immediate and obvious predecessor.  And British developers pioneered many of the concepts for vertical and short take-off and landing jet fighters that later influenced the design of the F-35.

Well written and laid out, with plenty of illustrations and photographs, Tony Buttler's volume has earned a well deserved place in preserving the aviation history that many of us take for granted today.