Customer Reviews

Focke-Wulf Ta 183 (Schiffer Book for Collectors)

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On cover of this book You will read: '...mostly unpublished photos, three-view line drawings, and stunning state-of-art digital color images'.
But in the book there are no good three-view line drawings (I know that such a drawings are aviable for Ta 183).
'State of art 3D color images' are in fact very low quality, black and white, very bad renderings (You can find better in the net). Some of them has pixels 1x1mm! Picture on the cover is ink jet print!

In my opinnion it is the worst airplane monography, that I have ever seen (I had to gave this book 1 star, but it should be 0).
I can hardly belive, that someone would print it and sell it as commercial book!

Don't buy it - it [is bad]

Where do I start? First off, Myhra is terrible writer, whose prose is pedestrian and clumsy. The photos in the book are mainly of models - nicely built, but still models. On the good side, Myhra has access to many original drawings, and these are interesting.

What is most disturbing is Myhra's complete lack of research skills in anything other than his primary subject, and his utter disregard for any facts that contradict his pet theories.

Myhra repeats the now discredited theory that the Soviet MiG-15 was a "reworking" of the Ta 183, rather than an original design, as has become clear since the relevant Soviet information has become available since the fall of the Berlin Wall. For the accurate story, try Bill Gunston's authoritive book in MiG Aircraft in the Putman series.

Even more of a stretch is Myhra's assertation that the English Electric Lightning was a reworking of a design that Ta 183 designer Hans Multhropp did for the RAE in 1947. Myhra is obviously unfamiliar with his subject; he claims the Lightning first flew in 1947, when it actually, as the P.1, flew in 1954. The two aircraft have virtually nothing in common; the Multhropp design had absolutely nothing to do with the Lightning. I should know; my father was on the Lightning design team, and I asked him!

Myhra shows a blatant disregard for facts in this book. Look at the pictures if you like, but ignore the text.

This heavily illustrated volume is just one in the "X Planes of the Third Reich Series." Although this aircraft, the Ta 183, is a most interesting topic for study this work gives relatively little in the way of substance, which begs the question, "If there is such scant information about this aircraft why produce an entire book on it?"

A brief introduction (8 or 9 pages of a total of 64) is devoted to the history of the aircraft including the fighter's conception and post World War II developments. Much more information regarding the later topic should have been presented in this work seeing that the Ta 183 was never produced during World War II.

The rest of the book is devoted to pictures, diagrams, and computer rendered images of the Ta 183. While the computer rendered images are fascinating to look at they are overdone, there are too many; they become too redundant. There is also too much reliance on pictures of scale models of the aircraft. This is understandable seeing that the Ta 183 was only in the design stages when the Third Reich collapsed, but they are overused. On the other hand they do give the reader a clear idea of what the fighter would/could have looked like. Photographs of the post-war evolution (in Argentina and the Soviet Union) of the aircraft are adequate.

Overall this book is not a "must have" even for "hard core" Luftwaffe enthusiasts. It does however make enjoyable viewing just for the sake of the historical question of "what if".

I got the book because I am a fan of the genre. If you ask the question, "why is there an entire book written on an aircraft that never flew?", well the answer is this: This paper design influenced a whole slew of advanced jet fighter designs post war. The Ta-183 was the first jet fighter aircraft designed with (the then) revolutionary swept wings and T-tail. The soviet Mig-15 / Mig-17 (and to a certain extent the US Sabre), legendary aircraft of their time owes their ancestral lineage to the Ta-183 "Huckbein". You can still see the Mulhopp "T-Tail" whenever you fly a 727 or MD80. I kind of liked this book. Although to a certain extent there is some padding due to the dearth of real Ta-183 material, I liked the way the author contrasted how two different designs derived from the Ta-183 ended up as. The Mig-15 became a legendary soviet fighter whereas the Argentinian Iae-33 Pulqui II was a dismal failure even though its design was helmed by the legendary Kurt Tank. All-in-all, I found this book to be fascinating reading. For fans of the "secret projects" genre, this book is a "must read" if not a "must have".