Customer Reviews

Flying Guns of World War II

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Anthony Williams and Emmanuel Gustin break important new ground with "Flying Guns of World War II." This book is the first comprehensive look at aircraft armament during the Second World War, an aspect that is more often than not neglected by aircraft historians. The book begins with a discussion of some of the conventions of aircraft armament and the basics of how most machine guns, cannons, and their ammunition work. It also discusses the history of aircraft armament from the end of World War I, including the development of rifle caliber machine guns, heavy machine guns, and cannons, with a focus on the World War II period.

The book offers a wealth of photographs, technical specifications, and charts. The appendices at the back include a lots of additional information including gun drawings, technical specifications, and a glossary of key terms.

The key drawback to this book is that the authors take a significant amount of space discussing the different World War II aircraft types, and the armament packages they carried. This is somewhat redundant, however, as this information can just as easily be found in any one of a number of other books on World War II aircraft. Perhaps the authors could have better used this space by going into the history of the guns themselves including who designed them and what differentiated guns of one model from another.

Nevertheless Williams and Gustin have produced an excellent book that should be required reading for World War II aviation buffs, and will hopefully spur much more writing and research into this field.

The movies, from Tora, Tora, Tora; to the Battle of Britain; to Twelve O'Clock High pretty well tell the story. All kinds of fancy airplanes have been designed and built to get a gun pointed at the enemy.

World War II was fought with a set of airplanes that fit into a very small segment of time. The last biplanes were built about 1940, and the first jets about 1944. But World War II was fought (largely) with piston engined monoplanes armed with machine guns.

The British studies showed that they were primarily fighting unarmored aircraft that would be best attacked with rifle caliber machine gune. The Americans were in love with their .50 caliber machine guns. The Germans, faced with the problem of shooting down the heavily armed American bombers favored heavier cannon that could fire explosive shells.

This is the story of the guns used by the air forces fighting World War II. It includes the technical aspects as well as some of the theory, or perhaps politics is a better word, behind the thinking of the various air forces.

A unique work for the weapons affectionado.

A military aircraft's armament is no less important then the aircraft it self, but it is a facet of aerial warfare often overlooked. Flying Guns of World War II does a very comprehensive job in covering the guns and cannons used by the combat aircraft of the second world war. And even though the book is very technically oriented it's readily accessible style of writing makes it a pleasant read. I fully recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic.

This book sets a standard that would be hard to beat. The authors know their subject and the production is superb. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the field covered, and to others as an example of how a book should look.