Contrails Over the Mojave: The Golden Age of Jet Flight Testing at Edwards Air Force Base [Hardcover]

George J. Marrett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 3, 2008

In Contrails over the Mojave, Marrett takes off where author Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff ended in 1963. Marrett started the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB only two weeks after the school's commander, Col. Chuck Yeager, ejected from a Lockheed NF-104 trying to set a world altitude record. He describes life as a space cadet experiencing 15 Gs in a human centrifuge, zero-G maneuvers in a KC-135 'Vomit Comet,' and a flight to 80,000 feet in a Lockheed F-104A Starfighter. After graduating from Yeager's 'Charm School,' he was assigned to the Fighter Branch of Flight Test Operations for three years. There he flew the Air Force's latest fighter aircraft and chased other test aircraft like the X-15 rocket ship and the XB-70A Valkyrie as they set world speed and altitude records.

Marrett takes you into the cockpit with him going vertical in a T-38 Talon, high-G maneuvering in an F-4C Phantom and wet runway landing tests in the accident-prone F-111A Aardvark. Marrett relives stories of crashes when his test pilot friends were killed. He writes about Air Force test pilot Col. 'Silver Fox' Stephens setting a world speed record in the YF-12 Blackbird and Lockheed test pilot Bob Gilliland flying a single-engine, minimum-control speed stall in the SR-71 spy plane. He recounts dead-sticking a T-38 to a landing on Rogers Dry Lake after a twin-engine failure and conducting dangerous tail hook barrier testing in a fighter jet without a canopy. Marrett also writes about a UFO sighting in the night sky above the Mojave Desert, a mysterious sighting now referred to as 'The Edwards Encounter.'

Editorial Reviews

Review

George Marrett has done it again! Contrails over the Mojave: The Golden Age of Jet Flight Testing at Edwards Air Force Base is a must have book for every lover of aviation. Marrett writes as well as he flew, which is to say with authority, accuracy, punch and color! The wonderful thing about Marrett is the amazing way he puts you in the cockpit of a complex Mach 2 aircraft and makes you understand just how far he is pushing the envelope. He peals back the layers of his fellow test pilot s personalities, exposing them as they really were: dedicated, fearless scientists, always ready to push the envelope, but doing it the right way the Edwards way. --Col. Walter J. Boyne, USAF (Ret.) Author of the Smithsonian Book of Flight, former Director of the Smithsonian s National Air & Space Museum and a Member of the National Aviation Hall of Fame

About the Author

George J. Marrett flew 188 combat missions in the Douglas A-1 Skyraider in Vietnam and tested more than forty types of military aircraft in twenty-five years as a test pilot for the Air Force and Hughes Aircraft Company. He is a member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and of the Board of Trustees, National Test Pilot School, Mojave, California. He is the author of Howard Hughes: Aviator; Cheating Death: Combat Air Rescues in Vietnam and Laos; and Testing Death: Hughes Aircraft Test Pilots and Cold War Weaponry. Now retired, he lives in Atascadero, California.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press (March 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591145112
• ISBN-13: 978-1591145110
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #931,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Right Stuff" for USAF fighter testing programs, June 12, 2008

By 

J. Rudy "Major, USAF" (Fairfax, VA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Contrails Over the Mojave: The Golden Age of Jet Flight Testing at Edwards Air Force Base (Hardcover)

George Marrett vividly recounts his memoirs of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base in "Contrails Over the Mojave". Marrett and his fellow test pilots constantly pushed the performance envelope in the mid-1960s to advance American military aviation.

Marrett's interest in aviation began at an early age during the height of World War II. He and his friend Bob used to run around the backyard pretending to be fighter pilots, or sometimes a bomber crew on a mission over Germany. He was always the co-pilot, because Bob said that you had to have a silver whistle to be the pilot. Marrett continues "I envied Bob and his whistle and promised myself that someday I would get a whistle and advance into the lofty ranks of the pilots. I never asked Bob why a whistle was required. It was just a requirement - that was enough for a young boy." After graduating flight school, he earned silver wings, but he was always trying to earn his next `silver whistle'.

The book does an outstanding job of focusing on the major events in Marrett's 12-year Air Force career. After his flight training at Bainbridge AFB, Georgia, he traveled to San Francisco, California to stand fighter alert in the nuclear-missile armed F-101B Voodoo. It was here that he learned many of the important lessons for young fighter pilots, and he also set himself up for success as a future test pilot.
After graduating from Col Chuck Yeager's `Charm School', Marrett finally became a test pilot. In this section, the book's scope expands to cover the contributions of the entire fighter branch, not only the achievements of Capt Marrett. To name a few of the bigger testing programs, the book offers recollections for the X-15; the century series fighters; the XB-70 Valkyrie; the SR-71/YF-12/A-12; the F-4 Phantom; and the F-5 Freedom Fighter.

Along with his engaging recollections of the aerial achievements, Marrett also captures the subtle entrenchment of bureaucracy at Edwards AFB. Along with the rapid expansion of the base, the Air Force Flight Test Center had to deal with increased oversight from the Air Force. As aircraft design knowledge (and aircraft prices) increased, there was an increase in the safety requirements at the installation. Tragically, Marrett recants the stories of far too many pilots who gave their lives chasing the next whistle.

Marrett is an extremely talented author. "Contrails Over the Mojave" is an insider's look at the flight testing of America's greatest fighter planes of the 1960s. Every aviation enthusiast needs to set aside a space on the bookshelf alongside Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff".

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Contrails over the Mojave : The Golden Age of Jet testing at Edwards AFB, March 13, 2009

By 

Johnny Allred - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Contrails Over the Mojave: The Golden Age of Jet Flight Testing at Edwards Air Force Base (Hardcover)

A very good story about flight testing, but like Marret's other books(So far there are 2 more about his flying) he never realy puts you in the cockpit and lets you fly the jet he just tells you about it. I wanted more!. Cheating Death his first book is also a good story but what is it realy like to fly the A-1H Skyraider on combat rescue missions in vietnam??. Thank you for your stories and service Col Marret. I'm just an old marine what do I know?, Simpher Fi. JA

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining book. However..., October 19, 2008

By 

C. Wyndham (Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Contrails Over the Mojave: The Golden Age of Jet Flight Testing at Edwards Air Force Base (Hardcover)

"Contrails Over the Mojave" is certainly an entertaining book about one of my favorite subjects. I learned a lot of details about some of the famous and not-so-famous flight test projects at Edwards. The author's qualifications to write this book are beyond reproach.

However...

There are at least two pages in the book (pages 68-69, Chapter 6) that are nearly identical to text found in Chapter 10 of a book entitled "Aerospace Pilot," by Charles Coombs, published in 1964 by William Morrow and Company, Inc. There is no attribution or acknowledgement of the source of the text in either book, so I don't really know what to think here. Using substantial portions of material without attribution has a name -- it's called plagiarism.

To be fair, perhaps the section of text in question was actually written by Marrett originally, and used by Coombs first in his 1964 book. I don't know. What I do know is that SOMEBODY wrote it, and one of the authors appears to have lifted it from another.

This was a minor detraction from what is otherwise a very good book.