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Whatcha Reading, Aviation Related?

gregfuess

Well Known Member
Any good books out there to be recommended? So far, I have thoroughly enjoyed the following, in no particular order:

- The Propeller Under the Bed: A Personal History of Homebuilt Aircraft
by Eileen A. Bjorkman

- Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
by Laura Hillenbrand

- The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh, and the Epic Age of Flight by Winston Groom

- Chickenhawk by Robert Mason

- Sully: My Search for What Really Matters by Chesley B. Sullenberger

- The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

- West with the Night by Beryl Markham

-
 
Here are a few of my favorites:

Favorite Airplane Books:
Flight of Passage: A True Story - By Rinker Buck
North Star Over My Shoulder: A Flying Life - By Bob Buck

Favorite Space Program Book:
Shuttle, Houston: My Life in the Center Seat of Mission Control - By Paul Dye
 
- Fate is the Hunter, by Ernest K. Gann
- Aiming High, by Jon Johansen (out of print, try Ebay)
 
Have to second Fate is the Hunter. 30y of flying...everyone told me to read it... just got around to it. It's fantastic. Im jealous of anyone who hasn't read it.
 
Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing
by Peter Robison

Story of the long term trends inside McDonnell Douglas and Boeing that lead to the 737 MAX design decisions, MCAS, and two MAX crashes.
 
I've been reading quite a number of WWII aviation books lately. One of the best of those is:

One Damned Island After Another: The Saga of the Seventh
by Clive Howard and Joe Whitley

It tells the story of the US Army Air Corps battles in the Pacific. Lots of books about Naval and Marine aviators in the Pacific. This tells the story of the 7th Air Force.

I also recommend Fate is the Hunter and also Samurai by Suburo Sakai.
 
Failure is not an Option by Gene Kranz
Just retired so trying to catch up from years of only reading aviation magazines.
 
If you liked Unbroken, you will probably like Devil at my Heels, which was written by Louis Zamperini and David Rensin.

My favorite is Whistling Death which was written by the chief test pilot on the Corsair program, Boone T. Guyton.

Another good one is Jenny was no Lady, by Jack R. Lincke. A good tale of the early days.

Jimmy Doolittle's autobiography, I could Never be so Lucky Again.
 
Right now I'm reading Unspoken Sermons by George MacDonald, but on the aviation front, I'd recommend anything by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, particularly Wind, Sand and Stars, and Night Flight. They are personal favorites.
 
Jon Johanssons's airplane was an RV-4 registered VH-NOJ (Jon backwards because his school teachers told him he was dumb and backwards). Flew around the world 3 times, was in Oshkosh at least once.
 
Bax Seat: Log of a Pasture Pilot, by Gordon Baxter. A compilation of his Bax Seat columns for Flyingmagazine.

Still available on line.
https://www.amazon.com/Bax-Seat-Log-Pasture-Pilot/dp/0871650169

There is no way you can read this book without a smile on your face.

There is no way a true pilot can read this book without at least once smelling the crush of grass beneath the wheels of a Cub. Bax just had a way with words and descriptions that not only puts the reader in the seat of the airplane but also puts the reader in the moment, in the frame of mind. I've striven for years to find a writing style as evocative as that of Bax. My struggle continues...Bax had a rare gift.
 
Air Apaches by Jay Stout. B25 gunships in the South Pacific WWII.

Also available on Audible… I usually listen to aviation audiobooks while I pound rivets.

I’ll put in a plug for another B-25 gunship book…. ‘Indestructible’ by John Bruning…. Couldn’t put it down.
 
Just retired...

I don't think I knew that. Congratulations!

As for my favorites...

  • Burt Rutan's Race to Space, by Dan Linehan, about the many unusual airplanes that Burt/RAF/Scaled created over the years. It's short and chock-full of cool photos and neat stories, so I have given it as a gift to many non-airplane-geeks to help them appreciate why we're into what we're into.
  • Cockpit Confidential, by Patrick Smith, containing many entertaining tales of being a pilot and an airplane geek, from Private Pilot training to widebody jetliners. Here is a fun sample of his writing.
  • The Road to the 707, by Bill Cook, who worked on the B-29, B-47, and 707. The book covers all of aviation history and is a little Boeing-centric but is probably the best single description (written by someone who was there!) of how the engineers who designed airplanes in World War 2 figured out how to design jets.
  • Heroes of the Horizon, by Gerry Bruder, about pilots who flew in Alaska between 1930 and 1950, back when it was even more dangerous and even more adventurous (and much less regulated) than it is today. Each chapter contains a few stories by a different pilot. In the first five or six chapters, there are three or four examples of "We crashed, so another airplane was sent out to find us, and they crashed".
  • Only the Wing, by Russell Lee, a biography of Reimar Horten covering the details of the design and test-flying of his many unique airplanes.
  • Airplane War Stories, an autobiography by Jan Roskam that dives into many interesting aeronautical engineering anecdotes. Sample.
  • Lockheed Stealth, by Bill Sweetman. A single book that does a great job covering the many creative innovations made at the Skunk Works.
  • Hypersonic!, by Dennis Jenkins and Tony Landis, about the X-15.
  • Valkyrie, by Graham Simons, about the XB-70.
  • Yeager, Chuck Yeager's autobiography. Very interesting and entertaining but I think some of the stories stretch the truth a little bit...
  • Getting maybe a little too deep into the engineering side of things are books like Raymer's Simplified Aircraft Design for Homebuilders and Nickel and Wohlfahrt's Tailless Aircraft in Theory and Practice, which I really love but I realize are only exciting for people who plan to design their own airplanes (including RC).

I'm sure I'm missing a ton of really good ones but these are the first ones that come to mind (as well as the one by David McCullough about the Wright brothers, which is also terrific, mentioned on the first post of this thread).
 
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Fighter Pilot by Robin Olds … If you ever wondered what it’s like to be a fighter pilot, the last few pages of this book describe it better than anything else I’ve seen.
 
Good Book

Hogs in the Sand. A book written from the journal of an A10 pilot during the Gulf War. Author is now an RV driver.
 
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