Aviation Books

Patrojv

Patrojv

Filing Flight Plan
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Patrojv
Hi guys,

Tomorrow I start a new China 30hr trip, any good aviation related book you can recommend?

Thanks!
 
Either one of the Lindbergh books, the one he wrote "The Spirit of St Louis" or the biography by A. Scott Berg. The latter one would probably take more than 30 hours to read though, it's pretty big.
 
Anything on GA? A lot on WW and Airliners...
 
Why planes crash.
Falling Stars--airplane crashes that filled rock and roll heaven
 
Chickenhawk. I know I know, its about helicopters and not planes.

I just started it last night and it has been hysterical so far.
 
So I Bought an Air Force.
A Higher Call
A Nightmare's Prayer
Chickenhawk (Chapter one is literally Army flight school. I laughed.)
Low Level Hell
Why Planes Crash
Squak 7700
 
Air Vagabonds, by Anthony Vallone - about ferry flying, including single-pilot, single-piston-engine, transoceanic, jungle and/or mountain ferry flying.

A more colorful book on ferry flying and commercial island flying in the South Pacific is:

So You Want to be a Ferry Pilot, by Spike Naismyth


.
 
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Soldier64 said:
So I Bought an Air Force.
A Higher Call
A Nightmare's Prayer
Chickenhawk (Chapter one is literally Army flight school. I laughed.)
Low Level Hell
Why Planes Crash
Squak 7700
Click to expand...

Having read Squawk 7700, I have to disagree with suggesting it as a good read... it seemed over dramatic.
 
China's Wings - Gregory Crouch
 
I just finished Flyboys. It is about the air war in the Pacific and specifically the attacks on Chichi Jima. Covers George HW Bush's shootdown.

Anything related to early Alaska bush flying. Those guys were nuts.
 
Wager With The Wind is the only aviation book I've read that doesn't put me to sleep. Conversely I could read Red Storm Rising once a month and not get tired of it.
 
bburnett said:
I just finished Flyboys. It is about the air war in the Pacific and specifically the attacks on Chichi Jima. Covers George HW Bush's shootdown.

.
Click to expand...

Just a couple of chapters into Flyboys, so far so good, I think I'm going to enjoy the read ...
 
Probably too late, but you might be able to find this book for an e-reader while you're on the road. The book "Chasing the Glory" by Michael Parfit is the sorry of a guy retracing Lindburg's flight across America ayer his transatlantic flight to promote aviation. The "glory" in the title is the nimbus of light that appears to airline the shadow of your plans on the ground when viewed from above. There is no driving plot, but it is a good meditation on travel and on the wonder of small plane flight.
 
Probably too late, but you might be able to find this book for an e-reader while you're on the road. The book "Chasing the Glory" by Michael Parfit is the sorry of a guy retracing Lindburg's flight across America ayer his transatlantic flight to promote aviation. The "glory" in the title is the nimbus of light that appears to airline the shadow of your plans on the ground when viewed from above. There is no driving plot, but it is a good meditation on travel and on the wonder of small plane flight.
 
Moondog's Academy of the Air and Other Disasters
Written by Peter Fusco
One of the few books that had me laughing out loud.
 
Gucci Pilot said:
Flight of Passage
Fighter Pilot - Robin Olds
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Ed Rasimus helped with Fighter Pilot, Ed wrote a couple books, When Thunder Rolled and Palace Cobra. Ed passed away a couple years ago.
 
Odd, how our interests differ. I could not read Flyboys. It was like eating concrete. Yet, that is about the only aviation book I couldn't finish and I have about 300 in my library.
 
Bird men great book on the early days of flight and the animosity of the Wrights for all of the other aircraft company's especially Curtiss. I also second Berg's biography of Lindbergh. Don
 
Check the apple store for "Learning to Fly" by Claude Grahame-White for a look at how it used to be. Just ignore the prices he gives. He talks about the many advances since the early days of aviation, how much more reliable the modern planes and engines are. The great part is he wrote the book in 1916.
 
Clark1961 said:
Ed Rasimus helped with Fighter Pilot, Ed wrote a couple books, When Thunder Rolled and Palace Cobra. Ed passed away a couple years ago.
Click to expand...

I have both books, and reread them every year or two. One is his first tour in F105s, other book about his F4 tour, both in Vietnam, both as Clark says, excellent reads. Those Vietnam fighter pilots, especially 105 drivers, had some big ones.
 
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I know this is an old thread and I hope the original poster wasn't too bored on his 30 hour trip, but here are some the titles on my own bookshelves, in no particular order:

Anything early (Stranger to the Ground, Biplane, Nothing by Chance, A Gift of Wings) by Richard Bach, before he got all New Agey weird and stopped writing about airplanes (though Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions are fun reads if you don't take them seriously). Though I recently read Travels With Puff and enjoyed it, you just gotta ignore the parts where the airplane talks to him.

Anything from Ernest K. Gann. Most of his stuff is about the years around WWII, but 'Gentlemen of Adventure' is about some WWI pilots and their lives in later years.

Any of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's flying stories (some of the best, but I really have to be in the mood for his writing style).

Flight of Passage by Rinker Buck, two kids fly a Cub across the US in the early 1960s.

The Cannibal Queen , about flying a Stearman around the US, and Flight of the Intruder (a Vietnam tale) by Stephen Coonts.

The Air Devils by Don Dwiggins (the story of the early barnstormers).

Slide Rule by Neville Shute.

WWII:
Reach For the Sky by Paul Brickhill (the story of Douglas Bader, the legless Battle of Britian ace).
Fly For Your Life by Larry Forrester (the story of Bob Tuck, another Battle of Britian pilot... Tuck and Bader did not like each other).
The Look of Eagles by John Godfrey, an American fighter pilot.
Serenade to the Big Bird by Bert Stiles, a B-17 pilot.

Ultralights/microlights:
On a Wing and a Prayer by Colin MacKinnon, a Scotsman flying an ultralight across the southern US.
Global Flyer by Brian Milton, who flew a microlight around the world, more or less... he comes across as kind of a jerk, but it's an interesting read.
Propellerhead by Anthony Woodward, who decides to learn to fly to impress girls. This one alternates between "what an idiot" and "yeah, well, I did that too."
Flying With Condors by Judy Leden.

Marooned by Martin Cadin is a fictional novel about spaceflight, but has a great chapter about an 1960s USAF pilot taught to fly a Stearman by an old curmudgeon of an instructor.

Flight to Freedom by Michael Donnet. True story about a Belgian Air Force pilot stuck in occupied Belgium after Germany invaded finds a derelict Stampe biplane in a barn, fixes it up in secret, and flies to England.

Voyager by Jeanna Yeager and Dick Rutan, about the round the world flight.

Yeager, the autobiography, and Forever Flying, about Bob Hoover. Two contemporaries with very different personalities.

The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. Much better than the movie.

Rickenbacker, the autobiography. The WWI ace later ran Eastern Airlines.

The Spirit of Saint Louis by Charles Lindbergh.

Listen! The Wind by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
 
I sleep on long commercial flights. Usually asleep before takeoff. Makes the flight very short.
 
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