Fighter Planes (Beginners Plus)

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The Nobel-prize winning nuclear physicist was one of a number of high-value passengers including spies, downed aircrew and even artists on cultural visits who were carried to and from the Swedish capital inside the felt-lined fuselage of the war’s most unlikely airliner. Modern flight has opened the world up to new opportunities and paved the way to the development of advanced research and technology. But, what made it so groundbreaking? This book uncovers the stories behind the first aeroplane models, the development of flight, and brings you to present-day marvels such as the Gypsy Moth and Supermarine Spitfire. caption id="attachment_7493" align="alignnone" width="161" caption="Flying for fun has never been as funny."] [/caption] Staring grimly at British rain clouds, maintaining your own aircraft, and the fun of wind-in-your-face flying, Propellerhead captures the essence of popular flying in the UK at the grassroots level. The author, keen to impress girls at the start of the book by ‘becoming a pilot’, decides to take up flying and enters the addictive world of the weekend microlight aviators, with gently humorous results. Highly recommended. Bomber – Len Deighton caption id="attachment_7492" align="alignnone" width="165" caption="Biggles Pioneer Air Fighter draws heavily on the authors WW1 experience."] [/caption] Biggles might be regarded in some quarters now as hopelessly outdated - a children’s square-jawed flying ace from a different age. However, Biggles Pioneer Air Fighter contains a collection of vignettes that draw heavily on Johns’ own first-hand flying experiences as a pilot flying DH4s with 55 Sqn in WW1, including being shot down and taken prisoner. One wonders of the tales in this book, (including a carrier messenger pigeon going through the propeller) how many of these had happened to the author himself. Propellerhead – Anthony Woodward

When originally conceived, the French SPAD VII and German Albatros D II represented steps away from an emphasis on manoeuvre in aerial combat in favour of speed and durability. At the end of 1916, however, Albatros tried to have the best of both worlds. The result combined the better downward view and manoeuvrability of the Nieuport with the power and twin machine guns of the Albatros D II. But for all its myriad accomplishments, it was the audacious low-level daylight raids against heavily defended pinpoint Four months later, 105 Squadron spoiled Herman Göring’s big day in Berlin. Geoffrey de Havilland always maintained that simply being the “right size” was a crucial component of any successful aircraft design. With the Mosquito, he’d judged it to perfection.

8. Reach For The Sky

As heavily armed eight-gun fighters – especially as radar-equipped night fighters – Mosquitos shot down more than 800 enemy aircraft. Flown by Victoria Cross recipient Lanoe Hawker and the members of No 24 Sqn, the ungainly yet nimble DH 2 helped the Allies attain air superiority over the Somme in early 1916 and hold it through the summer. With its rotary engine 'pusher' configuration affording excellent visibility and eliminating the need for a synchronized machine gun, the DH 2 was more than a match for anything the Germans could put in the air. We learn that three years earlier, the young German immigrant Edgar Schmued was working at the fledgling North American Aviation Company when his boss asked him to meet Britain’s urgent need for a new fighter by designing “the fastest airplane you can”, around a 5ft 10 inch, 140lb man. It was the de Havilland Mosquito.And just to rub salt in the Reichsmarschall’s wound, Britain’s elusive new high-speed bomber, the world’s first multi-role aircraft, was made of wood!

Showcases particularly celebrated aircraft - such as the Supermarine Spitfire and Concorde - in beautifully photographed "virtual tour" features Each made very different and often contradictory demands of an aircraft, but the Mosquito was, perhaps uniquely, successful in all four roles. Air Marshal Wilfred Freeman, the man responsible for research, development and production of new aircraft for the RAF.

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To try to ensure it didn’t, an expedition was sent out to explore the jungles of Central America in search of alternative sources of the lightweight wood.

targets across occupied Europe that would come to define de Havilland’s Wooden Wonder in the mind of the public. It’s a book full of small, pleasant surprises. Did you know Gustave Eiffel invented the wind tunnel, and was the first to figure out that “lift is the result of air pressure above the wing”, not below it? Or that Royce and Rolls were an upstairs-downstairs team, Royce having grown up “dirt poor” with “only one year of formal education” while Rolls was an Etonian and the son of an aristocrat? The history of military and commercial aircraft from all over the world, decade by decade, to the present day in stunning visual detail caption id="attachment_7495" align="alignnone" width="333" caption="A fascinating account of a fighter pilot's job during the Cold War."] [/caption] What First Light does for Spitfires and the Battle of Britain, Robert Prest does for the F-4 Phantom in RAF service in the Cold War. Bouncing Buccaneers at low level, the awesome power of a jet fighter at your fingertips, this book gives a day-to-day account of a fighter pilot on QRA defending the UK and NATO in the military stand-off in Europe. Superbly written. Night Flight – Antoine de Saint-ExuperyThere were single nights either side of D-Day when Mosquito fighter-bombers would destroy nearly 1,000 separate pieces of German motor transport. The Albatros family of fighters were amongst the most effective aircraft employed by the Idlfieg (Imperial German Air Service) for much of World War 1, with the D.III and D.Va being flown by most of the 363 pilots who qualified as aces at some point in their often brief careers. But having chosen wood partly to avoid a shortage of raw materials, there was now concern that supplies of the lightweight balsa that, sandwiched in between plywood, made up the Mosquito’s skin, might run out. In 1916 German aerial domination had been lost to the French and British fighters. German fighter pilots requested an aircraft that was more powerful and more heavily armed, and the Albatros design bureau set to work on what was to become an iconic aircraft design. By April 1916, they had developed the Albatros D.I, that featured the usual Albatros semi-monocoque wooden construction with a 160hp Mercedes engine and two forward-firing machine guns. This book examines the technology and strategy that defined the outcome of the battles between the Spad VII and the Albatros D III. Author: