Customer Reviews

Aircraft Histories of the Ling-Temco-Vought A-7 Corsair II:

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I have been looking forward to the publication of this book since it was first announced. Of particular interest is information that does not appear on the aircraft history cards (called Flight Record Cards by the author), that is, histories after September 1987 when the cards were discontinued. Unfortunately, the book adds very little.

I have microfilm copies of many aircraft history cards (obtained from the Naval Aviation History Office in Washington DC) and they are not easy to interpret. The author states in the preface that the history cards give "a continuous flow of duty stations and dates of transfer". This is not correct. I happened to be working on a reel of microfilm when my copy of the book arrived so I compared what the book has to say with information on the record card for BuNo 159638 for the period Oct1984-Sep1985. During the whole period this A-7E was assigned to VA-37.

Every line on the history card has the date 06Sep1984 and the location changes over the year (Cecil Field, Iwakuni, Korea, Iwakuni, Cecil Field).

The book says the following:
- to VA-37, Cecil Field 06 Sep 84
- to VA-37, Iwakuni 06 Sep 84
- to VA-37, Korea 06 Sep 84
- to VA-37, Iwakuni 06 Sep 94
- to VA-37, Cecil Field 06 Sep 84

This cannot be true! This situation is quite common so the link between date and duty station is unreliable. I don't believe there is any link. Dates do change when there is a change in status or action. A guide to interpreting the information on the cards would be a valuable addition to the book. I will continue to use the history cards as my primary source.

The photographs are also a little disappointing. I welcome the large number but why aren't there any in colour? There are pages of colour patches (the author has published several books on patches). And why include some A-7D and A-7K aircraft? The captions would be more useful if they included date and location wherever possible.

I have not, and will not, proofread this book but when looking at the entry for BuNo 154466, I noticed an obvious error: "Transferred to MASDC....park code 6A0145, 03 NOV 83 thru 06 AUG 83". There must be a typo in the dates! How many more such errors are there? Without some means of collecting and publishing corrections and updates, this book is of limited value and is not recommended as a replacement for the aircraft history cards available on microfilm.

I cannot recommend this book for anyone who does not have access to the aircraft history cards to verify the accuracy of the text in the book.

I have hundreds of aviation books. I was so disappointed when I got this book. 400 pages, you'd think you were getting every fact or statistic on this neat little aircraft, but no.

So what is in this book? "Each individual aircraft history starts with the Contract
Manufacturers Number, followed by the Bureau Number, Navy acceptance date, flight records, and where available, crash notes and date sent to Davis-Monthan AFB for storage." Sounds impressive? What that means is the serial number of the plane, which unit got it and the date it was retired. Perhaps 2 pages of narrative that tell you this plane was made, a few small line drawings and colors of the unit patches.

1200 photos? Yes, too small to really see and the captions just state which tail number or unit it belonged to. There is no history of the development of the plane, what pilots thought about it, how it was used, nothing. I returned this book the day I got it. Way too expensive, I do not recommend this book to anyone for any reason.

Schiffer Publishing can either produce fantastic aviation books or they can create smoking holes. A-7 Corsair II is a smoking hole. When I saw the number of photographs included I had visions of clear color shots of this great aircraft. Was I disappointed. I remember looking through the book and saying to myself out loud, "black and white pictures you've got to be kidding me." I also quickly found at least one error. Aircraft no 152652 was shown to have crashed at Tinker AFB, OK in August of 1967. Having lived near Tinker my entire life I could not recall this loss, then I looked in the back of the book at the A-7A losses and it is listed as having crashed at NAS Patuxent River on the same date. What should have been of equal quality to Schiffer's Intruder: The Operational History of Grumman's A-6 or Tip of the Spear, this book on a great aircraft, the A-7 Corsair comes up far short. Unlike the other reviewers I won't be sending mine back, however next time Schiffer has an aviation book which catches my interest I will wait for the reviews to appear before I buy.

A must for any A-7 phanatic and researcher.Very detailed chronicle,original and seldom seen photos.It's worth the price.

The book had much information and many photos. The photos were small and not well seen or sharp. There was a lack of visual information though the histories were fairly extensive. In view of the price and the lack of good visual information, I returned the book to Amazon, a rare experience for me.