Aircraft - USA: books - US Air Force (USAF)

Combat Aircraft of the United States Air Force - Rare photographs from wartime archives (Images of War)

From its humble beginning in August 1907, when the U.S. Army Signal Corps created its Aeronautical Division assigned: "to take charge of all matters pertaining to military ballooning, air machines, and all kindred matters." That small inconsequence portion of the U.S. Army would grow progressively over the many decades to become its own separate entity following the Second World War, named the U.S. Air Force in 1947.

It became overnight the world's most powerful military establishment, able to deliver conventional and nuclear ordnance anywhere around the globe. Today's cutting-edge example of that is best represented by the supersonic, bat-winged B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, which can fly at an altitude of 50,000 feet, and is built of carbon-graphite composite materials.
The B-2 Spirit is a far cry from the early days of the service when it relied on fragile prop-driven, wood and fabric-covered aerial platforms, such as the Wright Type B, which could barely reach an altitude of 100 feet.

As this superb illustrated and well informed book vividly demonstrates, in between have been such iconic aircraft as the P-51 Mustang and P-47 Thunderbolt fighters and bombers such as the B-25 Mitchell, B-17 Flying Fortress and B-29 Super Fortress which dropped the first A-Bomb in 1945.
The Cold War demanded ever more powerful aircraft, such as the B-58 Hustler and B-52 Stratofortress and fighters including the F-86 Sabre, F-104 Starfighter and F-4 Phantom.

American Military Training Aircraft - Fixed and Rotary-Wing Trainers Since 1916

The U.S. did not become the world's foremost military air power by accident. The learning curve - World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and more recently the war on terror - has been steep.
While climbing this curve, the U.S. has not only produced superior military aircraft in greater numbers than its foes, but has - in due course - out-trained them, too.

This book provides a comprehensive historical survey of U.S. military training aircraft, including technical specifications, drawings and photographs of each type of fixed and rotary-wing design used over a 98-year period to accomplish the first step of the learning process: the training of pilots and aircrews.

Desert Boneyard - Retired Aircraft Storage Facilities in the U.S.

The "Desert Boneyards" are a concept well known to every aeronautical enthusiast, and yet also veiled in secrecy. Gigantic desert aerodromes in which military and civilian aircraft from all over the world are stored, either permanently or for a time, in order to serve as sources of spare parts or to be reactivated after a certain time. In this unique photo documentation, the reader is shown the best-known of these "desert boneyards" in Arizona and California and presented fascinating insights into a world far away from the well-known airports.

This book was originally published in German under the title Desert Boneyards by Motobuch-Verlag.