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R**N
Outstanding Aviation history.
These century series fighters were the stuff of dreams of my youth. In the period of the 60s before the expansion of the war in Vietnam they were regarded as the finest war planes in the world. After our Hawker Hunter, you understand.Now along comes a book which explains that the truth was often hidden because of the cold war. The Russians could not be told of the terrible accident rates of some of these planes or the failed engine developments which caused the F102 to be not really supersonic at all. Sometimes the loss rate (TO ACCIDENTS!) of these planes approached 50%! Like other countries America struggled with wing tip stall on swept wing aircraft (remember how the Swift and Javelin were clunkers in Britain). The F104 was a genuine design of genius but too complex for US mass requirements and got passed on mainly to Germany and Japan - its little wing so sharp that it wore a protective cover on the ground. Again it killed its pilots with great regularity.And all often came up badly versus the MiG 17 let alone the superb MiG 21. Poor fighters were often converted to standard but vulnerable ground attack aircraft. But accidents remained the major cause of loss.So, to put it bluntly, this is a warts and all story but still written with affection for this period of plane design.And amazingly the surviving pilots of the most lethal planes became very fond of them despite the fact that they could be so unforgiving. You can see all the originals at Wright Patterson USAF Museum in Dayton , Ohio; a museum as worthy of the detour as this book.A further highlight of the book are the planes that did not even reach production, or even reach flight. XF103, 106,107,108,109 as even more far fetched ideas were explored in the search for a periscope guided , 3000 mph, vertical take off fighter. some of the ideas were so far fetched and in the future that the USAF had to cancel them.
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