Fighter Aces of the U.S.A.
Toliver Raymond, F. - Constable, Trevor J.
FIGHTER PILOT ACES have become the most glamorous warriors since the medieval knights. Enhancing their lofty Status as the aristocracy of aviation is their sheer rarity. America has trained over 140,000 fighter pilots since the beginning of aviation, but less than three percent of them became aces - pilots credited with five or more confirmed victories in aerial combat. In Fighter Aces of the U.S.A. this elite fraternity springs to life again in the most comprehensive and detailed book ever compiled on America's knights of the air.
Award-winning authors Colonel Raymond F. Toliver and Trevor J. Constable cover the füll range of Americans who fought for the sky in fighter planes. This book spans from the expatriate Americans who flew with the British and French before U.S. entry into World War I, all the way to the supersonic super-athletes flying jets "in the barrel" over Hanoi. The deeds and feats of American aces in every conflict and every branch of the service are grippingly recounted. Numerous aces come forward with first person accounts of aerial combat charged with thrilling immediacy.
Detailing the changes in aircraf't and tactics that have followed the march of technology, the authors unfold a magnificent historical backdrop to the personal accounts of the aces. Each technical epoch, each war, brings new members to the ace fraternity. The aces appear as a cross-section of American manhood; numerous career portraits are full of surprises - like aerial combat itself.
Almost 700 photographs, many published here for the first time, lend a rare, living dimension to American acedom never before provided. The most detailed American ace-lists ever published, involving decades of work and including every known American who is an ace, provide a permanent statistical underpinning to the text and graphic illustrations.
Fighter Aces of the U.S.A. is an enthralling monument to America's warbirds, who have flashed on the scene and probably will now pass into history as aerospace technology reaches out into the cosmos. Here is aviation Americana at its best.
Hardcover with dust jacket
400 Seiten / pages
many photographs
book very good condition, dust jacket has some small tears at the top
Fallbrook, California - 1979 - Aero Publishers
Art.Nr. 24429
