One book I wholeheartedly endorse is “Secret Aerospace Projects of the U.S. Navy: The Incredible Attack Aircraft of the USS United States, 1948-1949,” by Jared Zichek. If you are, like me, an afficionado of aerospace might-have-beens, this book is a treasure trove of amazing designs from the late 1940’s, many of which look ultra-modern or downright sci-fi today. It’s wall-to-wall awesome, with a vast pile of designs and drawings, scanned directly from archival diagrams (not, as so often happens, rather cheesy, simplified three-views). Photos of factory models and artists concepts also illustrate the book.
The only problem I have with this book: it’s not *mine.* Some of the designs in the book I had seen bits and pieces of before, but nothing like this.
Get if for someone for Christmas. Get it for yourself for Christmas. Drop entirely unsubtle hints to someone else that they need to get it for you for Christmas. And tell them to use this link…
Note: you can also start your Amazon searches right here…
8 Responses to “Books Worth Buying: Secret Aerospace Projects of the U.S. Navy”
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I had our local library purchase a copy for their own collection a while back….
good read.
Another good read is “American Secret Projects-Fighters & Interceptors
1945-1978′.
Those planes carrying that missile would have been fun to board
especially with that large pylon.
Considering its landing speed of 200 mph, hitting the third wire with the Stiletto once it drops the missile and heads back to the carrier should be a real challenge for the pilot.
The X-3 crawls skyward after reaching its 250 MPH takeoff speed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6jnwKpdaP0
…to aid its takeoff, the pilot has lightened the aircraft by jettisoning around five pounds worth of crap and a quart of piss.
For something that couldn’t even go supersonic except in a dive, it sure looks like it should be able to do around Mach 5 or so. 😀
I’ve got a copy. From what I recall on Amazon used copies were being offered for $75 even before it was published!
IMHO, the Stiletto with a reaalllllly big bomb isn’t the weirdest plane in the book. Yes, they get even stranger.
If you have any interest in designers trying to come up with aircraft to meet high performance specifications when the technology isn’t quite there yet, this book is for you.
It’s a common and head scratching occurance… used copies being offered on Amazon for *more* than the price of new copies. Doesn’t make a lick of sense to me, but I see it a lot. Only thing I can come up with is “money laundering,” but it’s much to small-scale. Now, if I saw a used copy of a ten-dollar book being offered for a million bucks and someone actually bought it, I’d be pretty sure that there was something screwy going on. Of course, I’d then have to buy a new copy and offer it up for sale used…
Ordered this book (through your site, Scott) on the 7th along with several other books from Amazon and got it today. Sooo bloody cool. Paired up with the APR articles on submarine aircraft carriers & tube launched VTOL supersonic point defence fighters, I am drawn to the inescapable fact that designers at Grumman and Convair, in the 50s, were doing some serious crack. Serious, serious crack.
Showed it around the office and it drew unanimous cries of “Holy crap! What the _ _ _ _ is that?”
I can’t imagine the interaction of the shocks between the fuselages at Mach 2 and what that would do to the engine intake airstreams.
Paul