Vision
A Saga of the Sky
Mansfield, Harold
First Edition
VISION is the narrative account of forty years of progress in the air, the trials and triumphs of the great Boeing Airplane Company.
A distinguished military airman, who read the work in manuscript, summed it up: "Here at least is one Book which reveals the processes by which the airplane evolved, from a fantastic contraption to a vehicle of transcending importance." And no airplanes have been more transcendingly important or played a more decisive role in human affairs than the famous Boeing airplanes, the Flying Fortress, the Superfortress, the B-47, and the intercontinental jet bomber, the B-52.
The book Harold Mansfield has written is unique. It is fact told in the technique of fiction. It is a story more of people than of airplanes, but an ever-recurring cycle of astonishing new airplanes provides its fabric. It is a story of the stern issues of war and peace. But primarily it is a story of vision, of the struggles that have gone on in the minds of men, of inspiration and courage.
Because the author holds a candid camera before many a troubled conference, flies with test pilots and Air Force commanders on critical test flights and war missions, plunges deep into the creative thoughts of engineers, he has checked the manuscript with more than eighty participants in the story before its publication. The reader will find VISION a remarkable Saga of the Sky.
Contents
Foreword
BOOK ONE - THE CHALLENGE
1 Just Forty Years?
2 Meant to Fly
3 Learning Things
4 Out of the Storm Cellar
5 Production Needed
6 Airplanes, Not Cement Sidewalks
7 The Pursuit
8 Trials
9 Much to Be Discovered 10 Flying the Mail
BOOK Two - THE INSPIRATION
1 The All-Metal Idea
2 Bomber Experiment
3 Why Not a Twin-engine Transport?
4 Project A
5 Flying Fortress
6 The Transoceanic Step
7 Over the Weather
8 Running to Keep Ahead
9 Extremity
10 Lightning Strikes
BOOK THREE - THE TEST
1 Mounting Pressure
2 Superbomber Crisis
3 War
4 Around the Clock
5 Red Streak Program
6 Fortress Against Fortress
7 Battle of Kansas
8 Victory
BOOK FOUR - THE REALISATION
1 The Sweptback Wing
2 Bet on the Stratocruiser
3 The B-47 Jells
4 Range Dilemma
5 Stratojet Flight
6 Lowering the Boom
7 Heat on the Stratojets, XB-52
8 Fifteen-Million-Dollar Airplanes
9 Tankers, Transports, Threats
10 The Gase for the 707
11 Missiles and Nuclear Weapons
BOOK FIVE - THE OUTLOOK
1 Air Force First
2 Bomarc on the Track
3 The Open Mind
4 Progress and Principle
5 Vision
hardcover with dust jacket in protective Mylar
389 Seiten / pages
photos
good condition
New York - 1956 - Duell, Sloan and Pearce
Art.Nr. 16216
