Ultra-Large Aircraft, 1940-1970: The Development of Guppy and Expanded Fuselage Transports

As expected, this is an outstanding book. I bought it without seeing many reviews as I was so pleased with his prior book about the ATL 98 Carvair. So much interesting detail-rich content and many never before seen (by me) photos. My only complaint, which isn't the author's fault, is that its printed on flat paper and not as visually pleasing as Dean's Carvair book. So much here, C 74, C 124, C 97, C 99, C 133, ATL 98, various Guppies, Saro Princess, and much more. Not just planes, human interest stories too and with Jack Conroy in volved, there is always plenty to write about. I'd buy any aviation book Patrick Dean published. They are reliably top notch every time. You can tell he really put his heart into the project, digging deep for details not just rehashing what has already been published. A great read, with many unique photos and diagrams. In summary, a wonderful addition to my aviation library. 5 stars for sure.

I grew up in Van Nuys - near the airport where the "Guppies" were designed and built. These special planes were Souther California born and raised... This is a complete history of these birds with a lot on info on the man who dreamed these up - Jack Conroy... worked at the airport over the summers... brings back lots of memories... the book also reviews a number of other large aircraft... C74, C124, C99, CarVair and others

I bought this book primarily to learn more about the Convair XC-99 and the various Aero-Spacelines "Guppy" series of outsized transport aircraft. This book does not disappoint in regard to pure volume of information included, however I did not enjoy the 'read'; the author is clearly someone with good technical knowledge combined with a lack of training and lack of skill as a writer, and many common 'beginner' errors are found throughout. Lack of tight structure (probably not much of an outline used), poor sentence structure, poor paragraph organization, etc. It is very common to discover sentences, which should have been elsewhere, stuck haphazardly in the middle of unrelated paragraphs. Paragraphs which essentially repeat previous paragraphs are quite common. Failure to explain terms or define specialized words are commonplace, or such explanations/definitions may be placed AFTER the words have been used already. This makes for unpleasant reading, and also quite a high potential for reader confusion. Such issues are commonly corrected via the services of an editor, but as far as I can see, no editor was used for THIS book.This is still a worthwhile book, but it could have been much better if a co-writer or editor had been employed.

A great book, thoroughly researched and written, Mr Dean did a wonderful job interviewing all the key people who participated in the Guppy history, hence a book with a tons of historical facts and anecdotes that have never been published before, dealing of course on aviation history, but also the human side of that story as well, not to mention many exclusive photographs that had never been digitized or published before! Overall a fascinating book !

My father in law flew some of these planes and loved reading about them.

I had the chance to read this chance to read this book and provides a neat overview of large transport planes with fuselages designed in a way that they could accommodate huge payloads, including rocket stages and ballistic missiles. The Guppy Series of transport aircraft derived from the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser airliner, C-124 Globemaster II, C-133 Cargomaster, and the ATL-98 Carvair stand out as the most prolific planes in this book, because the Super Guppy and Pregnant Guppy played a role in airborne transport of Saturn rocket stages, effectively saving money and time when hauling large rocket stages to Cape Canaveral, Florida, while the C-124 Globemaster II and C-133 Cargomaster offered an ingenious method for transporting ballistic missiles to silos in a very short period of time. However, I was dumbstruck to find out that Fairchild came up with bizarre ideas for modifying a number of transport planes with an extremely huge fuselage, and that a number of American mobsters were planning to sell C-74s to the government of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista to further their personal enrichment. Also, unknown to most aviation historians, Convair proposed advanced versions of the XC-99, including one with jet engines and sweptback wings as used on the Convair YB-60. I was a bit surprised to see that this book is printed on flat paper, considering that I expected in those be a compact guide like American Attack Aircraft Since 1926. Nonetheless, this work is a concise directory of transport aircraft with fuselages big enough to haul oversize freight, especially with respect to how Aero Spacelines saved a number of Boeing Stratocruisers from being scrapped by modifying them into machines to transport large rocket stages to Cape Canaveral. Today's Boeing 747LCF Dreamlifter borrows a playbook from development of the Guppy Series and ATL-98 by hauling Boeing 787 components in a heavily modified fuselages to aircraft factories in the US at a lower cost than shipment by sea or land.