Customer Reviews

Aviation: The First 100 Years

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Aviation The First 100 Years by experienced pilot and aviation enthusiast Bill Gunston is an exciting and informative history filled with a wealth full-color photographs enhancing a descriptive and accessible text written for readers of all backgrounds. From the warplanes built and flown in the early 1900s, to modern-day airliners behemoths of the sky, Aviation The First 100 Years covers with both depth and style the remarkable and memorable history of men and machines conquering of the sky.

As the first review mentions, the book is filled with great pictures of planes, engines, airports, etc. taken over the 20th centtury. However, the accompying text is poor by every measure I can think of. According to the book's cover, the author had written 362 books since 1970. This is very impressive, of course, but perhaps at this point he is struggling to just fill up the pages with something.

To start with, there are a number of actual historic errors. There are also inconsistencies in the book. The author throws around technical data to impress the reader, whether or not it is correct or relevant. For example, according to p31, Bert Rutan' Voyager flew 24,986 miles on its around-the-world flight starting with 1,209 gallons on fuel. According to p145, it flew 26,678 miles starting 1,007 of fuel. A caption on p145, describes the Voyager as the only aircraft to fly around the world non-stop; elsewhere on p144 and on p31, it is described correctly as the only aircraft to do so without (mid-air) refueling.

There seems to be no logic to the organization of the book (beyond that the early aircraft is somewhere at the beginnning of the book, while modern and future in the second half). The author mentions the model and often power of engines used on different planes, but does ``GE F404" really tell you anything? While there is a ``Technology" section, it does not explain the difference even between different types (as opposed to specific model) of engines. The prose itself is rather poor, with lots of hype. As an illustration, here is part of one of the picture captions on p73: ``The French pilots preferred the Yak-3 to Western fighters." Did he really find the results of some poll? Yak-3 was a relatively primitive Soviet WWII fighter and hardly on par with the best western and German fighters (though cheaper and simpler to make and service).