Michael O'Leary (2)

Author Michael O'Leary must be a very religious man, because he is fascinated with the afterlife.

An old song I recently came across unfavorably compared the American B-17 bomber with the British Lancaster bomber. (Correctly, if it matters.) In order to research the point, I dug up as many books as I could on the two aircraft. When this one arrived, I was stunned to find it full of color photos. How in the world do you get a book full of color photos of World War II planes?

You don't take the photos during World War II, that's how. This is not a book about the B-17 "Flying Fortress"; it is a book about the B-17 museum piece. You won't learn anything useful about the B-17's role in World War II (where it flew a lot of missions but didn't drop a whole lot of bombs, because it didn't have the bomb capacity -- one of the reasons the song said the Lancaster was better). It's a collection of photos and anecdotes about the planes after they were sold out of active service. Most military aircraft, of course, get scrapped when they're no longer useful, but a surprising number of Flying Fortresses were allowed to serve other uses -- cargo carriers, pesticide sprayers, things like that. So there are still a fair number of the old planes around. Many have been lovingly restored, and they represent the bulk of the machines pictured here. (And, yes, it's mostly a book of pictures, with the text relatively incidental.)

The results are interesting, and perhaps beautiful if you like that sort of thing, although truly incomplete -- you never see a B-17 doing its natural task of going to war, or dropping bombs, and you never see the interior of the planes, just the exterior. If you want to see handsome aircraft, this book may be for you. If you want some history, or want to know why the Flying Fortress by the end of the war was mostly set aside for aircraft such as the B-24 Liberator and of course the B-29 Superfortress... this book will prove completely useless.… (más)

DC-3 and C-47 Gooney Birds is the first all-color celebration of these irreplaceable aircraft. Within are more than 120 color photos that show dozens of different Goonies from around the world - restored showbirds, nostalgic airliners, VIP transports, tired cargo haulers, fire breathing gunships, seized drug runners, and decaying hulks - plus a lively history that highlights the types remarkable career. The story begins with the prototype DC-1 and production DC-2 and continues through the major military and civilian variants including the B-18 Bolo and B-23 Dragon bombers and the remanufactured BT-67 turboprop Goonies that still roll off Warren Basler's production line in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.… (más)

examines the great fighting aircraft that equipped the American carriers in the Pacific during World War II and are now virtually extinct. The book contains B&W photos, illustrations line drawings, tables, bibliography, and an index.

An even bigger book than U.S. Navy Carrier Fighters Of WW II, though it is lacking the colour art of the latter. This title has the advantage of describing one more aircraft, the F7F Tigercat and the prototype that went before it, the XF5F Skyrocket, a plane that had it's major fame in the Blackhawk comics. It is also stronger in the photographical department and offers a little more background material.

"United States Naval Fighters of World War II in Action is mainly the story of the war at sea in the vast Pacific theater. It appears paradoxical that some of the greatest sea battles of all time should have been contested not by a direct confrontation of the heavy ordnance of capital ships but by naval aviators in action often hundreds of miles from their carrier bases. This book vividly recalls the saga of these Naval and Marine airmen and the great machines they flew in the war that in daily encounters with the enemy promised less than an even chance of survival. Present day aircraft enthusiasts will thrill to the author's penetrating technical analysis of such famous types as the Corsair, Hellcat, Wildcat, Tigercat and Bearcat. The author is equally concerned with the flyers and the way in which they lived on board the carriers and island bases, their combat techniques, and the courage with which so many of them died. The great carriers are also seen here in all their grandeur; their story recalls the golden era in the history of United States Naval Aviation.… (más)