Aircrash Detective
An International Report on the Quest for Air Safety
Barlay, Stephen
First Edition.
AIR DISASTERS make gruesome headlines - but they also save lives. The crash investigators see to that. Hunting the killer, they have no time for the grimness of tragedy. It is their job to learn from the scores of lessons in each mishap, whether it be a major accident or a minor incident, so that hitherto unsuspected hazards are eliminated.
Particularly now that we are on the threshold of a new aviation era, in the age of tightly packed airways, super-sonics, hypersonics and 500-seaters, we just cannot afford to have accidents at all.
The investigators' work, their astonishing ingenuity combined with their vast knowledge of engineering, aeronautics, pathology, psychology and almost all other sciences, is practically unknown not only to the general public but also to a high proportion of the aviators. Their work, carried out in many months between the accident and the final published findings, never gets into the headlines although it is perhaps the most fascinating of all 20th-century 'detective stories'. It is full of tension and dramatic urgency - other aircraft may fly into similar disaster while they are still searching for clues and proof.
There have been textbooks for experts and 'accident stories' for the laymen, but nothing about the investigators; how they live 'waiting' for disaster, how they sift evidence and recognise the vital clues, how they eliminate emotional and engineering red herrings, and in this way, through logical and technical deduction, discover the cause of tragedy.
This international documentary report is for the lay-reader - but some of the scores of investigators interviewed all over the world predict that it will help the exchange of experience within the 'trade', too.
Hardcover with dust jacket
376 Seiten / pages
with many photos
good condition
London - 1969 - Hamish Hamilton
Art.Nr. 22514
