Aerospace Book Recommendations

Number_35

Number_35

Joined
Jul 7, 2014
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I thought it would be fun and helpful to compile a list of good aerospace reading, fiction and non-fiction. I'll kick it off with a few that come to mind. They are not in any sort of order.

A History Of The Luftwaffe 1914 - 1945
John Killen
Non-fiction
This is an older book (1967?) but still holds up very well. The research was meticulous, and besides the obvious well-known topics (the Red Baron, the Battle of Britain, Stalingrad, etc.), the book covers lesser-known subjects such as the battle for Crete, etc.

Highly recommended!

*******
Chickenhawk
Robert Mason
Non-fiction
The author flew Hueys in Vietnam, and this is his unvarnished account of what it was like, both good and bad.

Excellent book, and your purchase will help a vet who did his best and suffered badly post-war.

*******

Flying Fortress
Edward Jablonski
Non-fiction
I read this close to 35 years ago, but still remember how much I enjoyed both the technical details and the incredible stories of courage and sacrifice. It was a great read.

*******

More later.
 
The Cannibal Queen by Steven Coonts

The Unsubstantial Air by Samuel Haynes

The Few by Philip Kaplan and Richard Collier

A Higher Call by Adam Makos
 
Since you included space, I would recommend Apollo: The Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox. The chapter on the development of the F-1 engine is worth the price of the book all by itself.
 
fdcg27 said:
Joe Sutter's 747 book and "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe come to mind,
Click to expand...
I loved "The Right Stuff" - have read it perhaps six times since buying a paperback copy over 40 years ago.

Wolfe was a very talented writer - everything of his I've read has been really good.

However, I was really put off by how he trashed Gus Grissom regarding Gus's Mercury capsule, Liberty Bell 7, sinking. While skirting the edges of libel, Wolfe strongly implied that Gus had panicked and blown the hatch.

After the spacecraft was recovered in 1999, there was some deformation of the capsule's doorway, which makes a technical malfunction much more likely. At that point I wish Wolfe would have revised that chapter, or at least issued a statement.
 
Martin Caidin's novel Marooned, about a post-Apollo low Earth-orbit endurance mission, was a great read.

The service module's engine fails, and the three astronauts are trapped in orbit.

I saw the movie (of the same title, and based on the book) in March 1970, just a few weeks before the actual flight of Apollo 13.

The coincidence was eerie.
 
If you really want to understand flying - how airplanes work - “Aerodynamics for Naval Aviators”, first published by NavAir in the 1960s, remains a classic, complete primer on the subject. You can buy a printed copy on Amazon - or find it for free on the web.
 
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