Customer Reviews

Always Another Dawn: The Story of a Rocket Test Pilot (Literature and History of Aviation)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a different book about an era that much has been written about. William Bridgeman's "The lonely sky", Pete Everest's "Fastest Man Alive" and Yeager's bestselling autobiography all talk about the same era - the development of supersonic aircraft in the late 40s and early 50s. The perspective is different, Crossfield was a new breed of test pilot - an engineer with the "Right Stuff". For one he was a NACA (now NASA) pilot from the beginning at Edwards AFB. The others were Air Force and manufacturers test pilots. He then left to join North American to push the X-15 program (a much needed research tool) to its completion. Great descriptions of both personal and organizational challenges, the preparation, design and flight testing associated with the X-15. Read "At the Edge of Space : The X-15 Flight Program" by Milt Thomson (who flew the X-15 after Crossfield had tested it) to see how well Crossfield and North American Aviation suceeded in their endeavour to make an unparalleled air vehicle. Some of its records held till the Space Shuttle broke them.

I borrowed this book from a friend some ten years ago, and have been trying to get my own copy ever since. The book is for the Aviation nuts out there and tells all about the early years at Edward Air Force Base, and the joy and sorrow these early flights bought. If I remember this book was so compusive that I read it in two day and not forgotten it in ten year. Buy it, read it, and enjoy it! I certainly Did

I must admit to being a little prejudiced in my review. For, fortunate for me, the author is my Godfather. My own father, Arthur Olderich, Jr., worked with Mr. Crossfield during the 1950s and, over the past few years, has shared many of his personal accounts of those very special moments in Aviation History. This book chronicles, in vivid detail, so many of the facinating incidents, milestones, and major events that colored the lives of those pioneer aviators at Edwards AFB. I treasure my autographed copy !

This is the story of a man who knew what he wanted to do very early in life and actually did it... proving that you CAN do anything you set your mind to do if you have the passion for it and persistence. The book is full of details about the particular series of flights in the X-15 but also contains much evidence of a full, well lived life. [...]

This book does not deserve a good rating. 2 stars is perhaps to harsh, but it is actually not well written at all. - On the other side I don't regret that I bought it. Because it contains a lot of information and opinions with regards to high speed and high alltitude flight from this Golden Age Of Aviation. It was of historical value for me to get a feeling of this periode. - But it seems that Scott Crossfield was pressed by a publisher to write for two audiences, and one of the "audiences" may have been the housewife of the late fifthies. (I soon discovered that I had to browse through the first 100 or 150 pages of the book.) - If Scott Crossfield had sat down today to rewrite the story, I believe it could have become a great aviation book.