Aviation History
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Fighter: From Wood and Canvas to Supersonic Flight
Traces the development of the fighter plane, describes and evaluates various models from biplanes to experimental jets, and explains the aircraft's role in combat.
First Transatlantic Flight 1919
On the cold morning of May 9, 1919, three frail U.S. Navy seaplanes rose awkwardly into the foggy sky over Long Island, New York in a daring attempt to fly the Atlantic. The planes were Curtis NC flying boats with a wingspan of 126 feet, and a hull length of 45 feet. The planes had a cruising speed of 77 miles an hour.
Plagued by bad weather and mechanical failures, each of the three planes was forced down into storm-ripped seas --- one for more than two days. At great personal risk the crews courageously made repairs while rolling in waves 30 feel high. But one plane made it --- "Putty" Read and his five-man crew became the first men to successfully fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
This gripping account makes dramatic reading. As Charles Lindbergh said, "It was skill, determination, and a hard-working loyal crew that carried Read through to the completion of the first transatlantic flight."
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Flight: The Evolution of Aviation
The Wright Brothers first took their flyer soaring in 1903 --- and less than a century later, rockets flew us to the moon. Experience the evolution of aviation, from the earliest pioneers to the complex technology of military jets and beyond, as inventors and aviators with skill and imagination push the limits of possibility. A rich selection of photos includes images of groundbreaking designs, patents, and logbooks from record-breaking flights.
Flight: The History of Aviation
John Batchelor & Chris Chant (ISBN 10 – 0075511762) Hardcover 192 pages Out of Print. New old stock. Slight fading on front jacket due to age. Book in excellent condition. Please ask for details.
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Flights of Fantasy: From Leonardo da Vinci to HOTOL
The dream of flight, the chance to soar like a bird, to escape the ties and troubles of earthbound existence, is one of man's most ancient and persistent fantasies. This book looks at some of the visionaries who have kept the dream of flight alive — the pioneers who made the first successful ascents above terra firma, the strategic airpower of World War I, daring aviators and world speed records, the tremendous technological advances in avionics, the Jumbo Jet and the emergence of 'stealth'. The names and the achievements are legendary.
Flights of Fantasy covers the aeronautical speculations of Leonardo da Vinci five centuries ago — his best-known design was for the ornithopter, a man-powered machine with flapping wings — to the first powered flight in an airplane by Orville and Wilbur Wright. This led to the development of the airship and the 1909 'stick and string' monoplane of Louis Bleriot. He rose to fame after successfully crossing the English Channel — a feat made possible only when a sudden rainstorm cooled the badly overheated engine.
Design-wise, the air race for supremacy was in full swing at this time, and in great contrast to the monoplanes, Dr Hugo Junkers was planning a gigantic all-wing aircraft to be made of metal. In fact Junkers ideas were so advanced, he even took out a patent. Then, at the end of World War I in 1918, designs for both landplanes and flying boats were well advanced.
Count Gianni Caproni, a pioneer of successful large bombers during the war years also turned his attention to civil transport. His amazing, albeit controversial, nine-winged Noviplano did actually take off but it dived, nose-first into Lake Maggiore, moments later.
Frank Whittle's design for the turbojet engine in 1929 was to revolutionize civil and military aviation, although at the time, lack of funding caused his patent to lapse. The end of World War II saw the design for the world's first supersonic aircraft followed in the late 1960s by Boeing's Jumbo Jet — the greatest people-mover of all time.
The fastest airplane is the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird which first flew in 1964 and was finally retired in 1990. Once more design crossed new frontiers, this time in structure, materials, engines and systems. Even the hydraulic fluid had to be specially created.
Flying Canucks II: Pioneers of Canadian Aviation
Among the many technological advances of this century that have shrunk our country, few have had as great an impact as aviation. Technologies evolve and national priorities change, but the qualities necessary to design aircraft, fly them in war and peace, and manage airlines remain constant. In this, his second book about pioneers of Canadian aviation, Peter Pigott brings a richness and understanding of the individuals themselves to the reader.
Flying Canucks II takes us into Air Canadas boardroom with Claude I. Taylor, to the Avro Arrow design office with Jim Floyd, inside the incredible career of Aviation Hall of Fame pilot Herb Seagram, on C.D. Howes historic dawn-to-dusk flight, and with Len Birchall in a Stranraer seaplane before he became, in Churchills phrase, The Saviour of Ceylon. It includes the story of how Scottish immigrant J.A. Wilson engineered a chain of airports across the country, how bush pilot Bob Randall explored the polar regions, and the ordeal of Erroll Boyd, the first Canadian to fly the Atlantic. The lives of Buck McNair and Bus Davey, half a century after the Second World War, are placed in the perspective of the entire national experience in those years. Whenever possible, Mr. Pigott has interviewed the players themselves, and drawing on his experience and contacts within the aviation community, has created a multi-faceted study of the business, politics, and technology that influenced the ten lives explored in depth in this book.
C.D. Howe, wartime Canadas absolute government czar used to say that running the countrys airline was all he really wanted to do. With a rich aviation heritage such as this, Flying Canucks II depicts the elements and the enemy at their worst and the pioneers of Canadian aviation at their best.
Flying the Frontiers
Flying the Frontiers brings to life tales from the log books and journals of people for whom aviation is a way of life. These intrepid and independent pilots, engineers, aircraft salvagers, and smoke jumpers tell of their adventures and misadventures over the endless bush and forbidding barrens of Canada's North, allowing readers a rare glimpse at a unique way of life that has taken these men and women across Canada and around the world.
Told first-hand by the people who experienced them, these are wondrous tales of near-misses and amazing successes, heroism and foolishness, innovations and renovations, where the element of risk is part of every flight plan.
Flying the Frontiers tells of an era that has all but disappeared, and of people whose careers spanned the pioneer age in aviation. Many continue to fly today. Their stories are enhanced by more than seventy personal photographs that depict the airplanes they flew, the territory they covered, and the predicaments in which they found themselves.
Flying under Fire, Volume Two: More Aviation Tales from the Second World War
Building on the success of the previous volume, Flying Under Fire, Volume Two, features nine more personal accounts from Canadian pilots who flew in the Second World War. From training camps to posting across Canada, Britain, Europe, and North Africa, these stories capture the excitement, fear, hope, and dread of war-time service, and are all told with the vivid detail of first-hand experience.
The contributors to this volume are a distinguished group: two are Air Commodores, three are Hall of Fame members, one has an Order of Canada and a McKee Trophy, and five have Distinguished Flying Crosses. Some, including Art Wahlroth and Bob Fowler, flew bombing missions in the war, many were fighters, and others, like Bill Carr and Jack Winship, performed reconnaissance duties, but all brought back tales of incredible resourcefulness and courage in the face of danger. And central to all their stories are the planes - Mosquitoes, Spitfires, Wellingtons, Meteors, Mitchells, and Kittyhawks fill the pages, each exhibiting the special quirks and personalities the pilots came to know and trust.
Flying Under Fire, Volume Two, pays tribute to the roughly 35,000 Canadian airmen involved in the Second World War, honouring their contributions and preserving their stories for generations to come.
Flying Under Fire: Canadian Fliers Recall the Second World War
Thousands of young Canadians volunteered for service in the RCAF, RAF, and other air services during WWII, risking their lives to protect others. The airforce played a critical part in the Allied victory and the stories of those brave men and women are as powerful and gripping as they were sixty years ago.
The stories collected in Flying Under Fire were originally published in the Canadian Aviation Historical Society Journal and are the first-hand accounts of pilots, trainees, and ground crew who recall the danger, excitement, tragedy, and victory of serving their country. They bring an immediacy and a special brand of grim humour to their tales, capturing the hopes, fears, and spirit of the times.
This book, made possible by the survivors of a long and difficult war, is dedicated to the memory of the 14,541 air personnel who did not return.
For the Love of Flying
This book tells the story of Laurentian Air Services and its subsidiaries, Air Schefferville, Delay River Outfitters and more. Drawing on interviews with Laurentian's owners, pilots and ground crew, Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail explores this innovative company's colorful 60-year history from its founding in Ottawa in 1936 with Waco biplanes through the 1990s when it operated twin-engine turboprops. This book is filled with lively flying anecdotes from the cockpits of world-famous bushplanes, including the de Havilland Beaver and Otter, the Douglas DC-3 and the Grumman Goose. From daring rescues and close calls, to the filming of Hollywood's "Captains of the Clouds," Laurentian's pilots did it all. Interlaced with these fascinating accounts are stories of back-country air tourism, the mineral and hydro-power boom in Quebec and Newfoundland-Labrador and tales of flying into fishing and hunting camps in remote regions of Ungava. With an exciting collection of photographs - many never before published - this is a long-overdue book that will appeal to all who enjoy the romance of flying on the frontier.
Frank Barr: Alaskan Pioneer Bush Pilot and One-man Airline
Frank Barr was one of the most interesting of the early aviation pioneers in Alaska. At age 28, the former calvalryman, parachute jumper and test pilot, signed on to a Yukon gold expedition in 1932 as a back up pilot. After the expedition failed to find enough gold, Frank Barr stayed in the north country and spent the rest of his career as a bush pilot. He flew every early plane from the Jenny to the Super Cub, carrying passengers and freight to remote villages in Alaska and the Yukon.
In 1948 Barr was elected to the Territorial Senate, and held that seat when in 1955 he one of the 55 Alaskans chosen by the people to write a state constitution. Today Alaska's state constitution is considered one of the best state constitutions ever written. Alaska was admitted to the union in 1959.
In his later years he flew bush routes for Alaska Airlines and became manager of the northern division. Even in retirement down in the lower forty-eight states, he conducted tours to Alaska and Mexico until he finally retired for good in 1974.
Frank Wootton: 50 Years of Aviation Art
This magnificent volume celebrates Frank Wootton's career as an aviation artist. He traveled the world as an official war artist to the Royal Air Force for much of WWII. In 1944, he joined the Allied forces and painted the events and aircraft around him as he moved with the troops through newly liberated France and into Belgium He was then moved to Southeast Asia where he saw out the end of the war in Japan. This collection encompasses the range of Wootton's aviation art, from those early intense years right through to the present day -- including his impressions of the Concorde and modern high-tech fighter planes.
Hands to Flying Stations: A Recollective History of Canadian Naval Aviation 1945-1954 (Volume 1)
In the first ten years, fifty eight young men of all ranks died, serving in the cause of Canadian Naval Aviation. Volume One of HANDS TO FLYING STATIONS describes for the first time those early days, and is the story as told by those who were there.
Hands to Flying Stations: A Recollective History of Canadian Naval Aviation 1955-1969 (Volume 2)
As told by those who were there, this is the story of the early years of Canadian Naval Aviation.
Hawker: One of Aviation’s Greatest Names: A Biography of Harry Hawker, MBE, AFC
Traces the life of Harry Hawker, his early life in Moorabbin, Victoria, his move to England, introduction to flying, his role in WW1, founding his company which produced Schneider Trophy-winning aircraft between the wars and the Hurricane of WW2.
Heartbreak and Heroism: Canadian Search and Rescue Stories
This book is about some of the most dramatic search-and-rescue operations in Canada. Whether the action is on the heaving deck of a sinking ship off the Newfoundland coast, within the incredibly confining walls of a power plant in Ontario, or high on a cliff face on a British Columbia mountain, each of these stories is exciting, memorable, and true. They are accounts of courage, loyalty, perseverance, and sacrifice that knows no bounds.
We read of the heartbreaking last days of an Anglican missionary fighting for his life in a lonely Arctic outpost. Another chapter relays a dramatic rooftop rescue in New Brunswick. We meet people who are saved from floods, fires, plane crashes, earth movements, and violent storms. No less are the stories of the sometimes unexpected and tragic losses of the rescuers.
Because Canada is so vast, Search and Rescue capability has to span the nation, and extend from sea to sea to sea. No other country has done what we have done. Heartbreak and Heroism is popular history at its most exciting.
Iron Eagle: The Turbulent Life of General Curtis LeMay
Curtis LeMay joined the United States Army Air Corps while studying civil engineering at Ohio State University. He had risen to the rank of major by the time of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor. He commanded the 305th Operations Group and the 3d Air Division in the European theatre of World War II from October 1942 to August 1944, when he was transferred to the China Burma India Theater. He was then placed in command of strategic bombing operations against Japan, planning and executing a massive fire bombing campaign against Japanese cities and a crippling minelaying campaign in Japan's internal waterways.
After the war, he was assigned to command USAF Europe and coordinated the Berlin airlift. He served as commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) from 1948 to 1957, where he presided over the transition to an all-jet aircraft force that focused on the deployment of nuclear weapons. As Chief of Staff of the Air Force, he called for the bombing of Cuban missile sites during the Cuban Missile Crisis and sought a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
This biography of the Air Force commander details his innovations, leadership decisions and strategies, and controversial actions and statements throughout his career, from World War II general to Chief of Staff.
Knights of the Air
Knights of the Air depicts life and times of the extraordinary pioneers who first built British aeroplanes. The aircraft are remembered but many of the men who designed and built them are not. Here are described the personalities and careers of British aviation pioneers.
Legends of the Air: Aircraft, Pilots, and Planemakers from the Museum of Flight
Seattle's Museum of Flight is a world-class center of aviation history. In this book, Sean Rossiter profiles 22 of the Museum's most significant aircraft, from a World War I Curtiss Jenny to an Apollo Command Module.
Legends of the Air: Aircraft, Pilots, and Planemakers from the Museum of Flight
Seattle's Museum of Flight is a world-class center of aviation history. In this book, Sean Rossiter profiles 22 of the Museum's most significant aircraft, from a World War I Curtiss Jenny to an Apollo Command Module.
Max Karant: My Flights and Fights
Practically every pilot in the U.S. knows of the legendary Max Karant, fighter for the rights of private pilots, thorn in the side of Congress and the FAA, and founding editor of AOPA Pilot, the magazine of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. No one did more to advance the cause of general aviation than this colorful and controversial aviator. From the 1940s to the 1970s, Karant battled Congress and the FAA, and also the big airlines, all of whom wanted to restrict private airplanes' use of airspace: "At each step of the way, Max stood for the little guy - the pilot who wanted to be safe, fly without an oppressive set of rules, and who had a keen eye on his wallet, " said Tom Horne of the AOPA. Toward the end of his fascinating life, Karant sat down to write this collection of flying stories - his own adventures in the air and against bureaucratic interference. But, in aviation terms, he "flew west" before finishing the work and his co-worker and friend Charles Spence completed these tales of a tumultuous time in aviation history that runs the gamut from hair-raising and historical, to serio-comic.
Mid-Air Moose Jaw (1st Edition)
Mid-Air Moose Jaw explores the mystery and expels the rumors of the 1954 mid-air collision over the city of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. A NATO Harvard training plane and a Trans Canada Air-Lines North Star collided in clear weather with the loss of thirty-seven lives. The airliner crashed into a home on Third Avenue Northeast, killing Martha Hadwen, the only fatality from Moose Jaw. Ross School, with 350 students was a mere 400 feet from the crash site. Many Moose Jaw residents witnessed the collision. Varied eyewitnesses accounts and surviving family members recollections are included. While newspaper coverage of this disaster was extensive, Mid-Air Moose Jaw ferrets out many untold anecdotes giving the reader a greater in-depth understanding of this horrific disaster.
How and why this mid-air collision took place is covered extensively with careful reference to the three Boards of inquiry. While some readers may find this aspect technical, the book is balanced with the human and sociological aspects following the disaster. Mid-Air Moose Jaw challenges pilots to practice proper collision avoidance techniques. At the same time the book reminds administrators and legislators of their responsibility to act diligently and promptly to potential aviation hazards. Since 1954 flying has become much safer with advanced technology. Mid-Air Moose Jaw is a tribute to those who paid with their lives to make aviation safer yet never to take that safety for granted.
Military Airfields of Britain: Southern England: Kent, Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex
Entries cover every military airfield within the counties, from WW1 to the present day and comprise: Brief history of the airfield, construction and use including decoy sites; comprehensive list of flying units with dates and aircraft types; list of HQ units based at the airfield; details of memorials; maps and plans of almost every airfield; location details; selection of period photographs. The airfields of Southern England like Biggin Hill, Kenley and Hawkinge played host to the greatest part of the action of the Battle of Britain. Farnborough, birthplace of British aviation, lies in Hampshire and many regional airfields played host to vital anti-submarine patrols during WW1.
Photographing Canada from Flying Canoes
The story of the pioneers who photographed Canada from the air. Air photography was essential in establishing provincial and national borders, building highways, etc.
Polar Winds: A Century of Flying North
Polar Winds traces a century of northern flight from balloonatics to bush pilots and beyond.
"They were all gamblers and fortune seekers. They did things on their own were independent people who wanted to be free to roam. They were good people, but, of course, some were loners or escapists. They all depended strictly on their wits."
Joe McBryan, pilot and owner of Yellowknife-based Buffalo Airways, was talking about gold prospectors in the 1940s when he said this, but he could just as easily have been describing the aviators who have flown northern skies for over a hundred years. They were adventurers and pioneers, but also just men and women doing what was required to make a living north of the sixtieth parallel.
Polar Winds uses the stories of these pilots and others to explore the greater history of air travel in the North, from the Klondike Gold Rush through to the end of the twentieth century. It encompasses everything from exploration flights to the North Pole in airships to passenger travel in jet liners; flying school buses for residential schools to indigenous pilots performing mercy flights; and from the harrowing crashes to the routine supply runs that make up daily life in the North. Above all, it is a unique history told through the experiences of northerners on the ground and in the sky.
Ragwings and Heavy Iron: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Flying History’s Greatest Warbirds
Depicts the airshows put on by part-time pilots, who rebuild, restore, and fly fighter planes from World War II.
Raymond Collishaw and the Black Flight
Ever wondered what it would be like to fly a biplane or triplane in the First World War? Raymond Collishaw and the Black Flight takes you to the Western Front during the Great War. Experience the risks of combat and the many close calls Collishaw had as a pilot, flight commander, and squadron leader. Understand the courage Collishaw and his fellow flyers faced every day they took to the air in their small, light, and very manoeuvrable craft to face the enemy.
As the third-highest-scoring flying ace among British and colonial pilots in the First World War, scoring 60 victories, Collishaw was only surpassed by Billy Bishop and Edward Mannock. This book traces Collishaw's life from humble beginnings in Nanaimo, British Columbia, to victories in the skies over France.
Reaching for the Skies
Ivan Rendall Hardcover 288 pages Out of Print. New old stock.
Revolution in the Sky: The Lockheeds of Aviation’s Golden Age
This fully revised classic first appeared in 1964, and is an exhaustive technical account of the years between 1927 and 1937, otherwise known as the golden age of aviation.
Shutting Down the National Dream: A. V. Roe and the Tragedy of the Avro Arrow
An account 'of the rise and fall of a Avro Canada, an aircraft manufacture that over its lifespan came close to some aviation firsts, but through bad timing, government indifference, political hostility (or American pressure?) and management decisions, it failed to achieve what it might have. The end comes in the mid-1950s with the Arrow, a jet fighter that some believe was not equaled anywhere until the mid-1970s.
Shuttleworth: The Historic Aeroplanes
David Ogilvy Softcover 144 pages Out of print
Sixty Years: The RCAF and CF Air Command 1924-1984
This book is a comprehensive history of Canadian military aviation during this period. It is a large format book, and is almost 500 pages long. Many of the profiles are of rare Canadian aircraft, not just the usual Spitfires and Sabres. Naval aviation is not covered. 60 Years is extremely well-illustrated, including a thirty-page section of colour profiles and there are hundreds of black-and-white photos.
Smithsonian Frontiers of Flight
Jeffrey Ethell Hardcover 256 pages Out of Print. Used.
Snakes in the Cockpit: Images of Military Aviation Disasters
Formerly classified, restricted, and never-before published photographs combine to deliver this exciting assortment of incredible military flight mishaps. You've seen his extraordinary photos before in his best-selling book Gun Camera World War II (0-7603-1013-0). Now, after five years of intensive research, L. Douglas Keeney releases his latest treasury of photographs that serve as a window into the unfortunate circumstances military pilots occasionally encounter.
Storms of Controversy: Secret Avro Arrow Files Revealed
The development of the Avro Arrow was a remarkable Canadian achievement. Its mysterious cancellation in February 1959 prompted questions that have long gone unanswered.
- What role did the Central Intelligence Agency play in the scrapping of the project?
- Who in Canada’s government was involved in that decision?
- What, if anything, did Canada get in return?
- Who ordered the blowtorching of all the prototypes?
- And, did Arrow technology find its way into the American Stealth fighter/bomber program?
Storms of Controversy answers these questions. Using never-before-released documents, the book exploded the myth that design flaws, cost overruns, or obsolescence had triggered the demise of the Arrow.
Storms of Controversy: The Secret Avro Arrow Files Revealed (3rd Edition)
New documents clarify the American government's role in the scandalous decision to scrap the Avro Arrow.
Not since the Spitfire of World War II has an aircraft single-handedly captured a nation's imagination, and no one has uncovered more new insights into this legendary aircraft than Palmiro Campagna. For this edition, Campagna has done just that, turning up new documents that further clarify John Diefenbaker's role in the Arrow cover-up, addressing Cabinet Minister Pierre Sevigny's mysterious claims in February 1998 about the destruction of the Arrow, and asking why, when the names of so many government officials appeared on the orders to kill the Arrow, Diefenbaker alone shouldered the blame.
Stukas, Jagdbomber, Schlachtflieger: Bildchronik der deutschen Nahkampfflugzeuge bis 1945
English:
This is a German-language text that covers all dive bombers, fighter-bombers and attack aircraft used by the German airforce up to 1945. More than 40 types of aircraft and numerous sub-versions from World War II are covered. The book also looks at interesting weapon developments and aircraft projects.
German:
Dieses Buch deckt alle bis 1945 von der deutschen Luftwaffe eingesetzten Tauchbomber, Jagdbomber und Angriffsflugzeuge ab. Es werden uber 40 Flugzeugtypen und zahlreiche Unterversionen aus dem 2. Weltkrieg behandelt. Das Buch befasst sich auch mit interessanten Waffenentwicklungen und Flugzeugprojekten.