Customer Reviews

Lockheed F-104 Starfighter - Warbird Tech Vol. 38

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

 

 

This book is a great overview of the F-104s history. The author's work at Lockheed put him in a great position to locate several unusual photographs and drawings of the F-104s development. It also gave him access to many personnel at Lockheed who were involved in flight test and other design aspects, whose anecdotes spice up the book.

The descriptions of systems are on the short side, but well written and make it easy for the neophyte to understand how the systems work, yet have enough detail to satisfy most more advanced readers.

For the modeller there are several photos of unusual stores and experimental equipment that will come in handy. The photos cover many different air forces too.

I was lucky enough to fly several models of this wonderful aircraft over the period of several years. It was a joy to fly. Faster than a speeding bullet nothing was even close in its day. The book does a really good job of explaining the aircraft and cablabilities complete with pictures and all the specs. A great read for one interested in reading about jet combat aircraft of that era.

If there's a sexy looking bird the F-104 must be the one , even on the ground it looks it's doing Mach 2, volume 38 is a great collection of text&images about the genesis of the missile with a man on it¡¡¡ a five star choice.

Having read an earlier title in the series on the F-4 Phantom, I felt this would be a good addition to my library as I have a keen interest in the F-104, and I'm big on things like technical details. In short, the book is pretty good for the price you pay though there are some odd errors for a book of such detail.
The technical/engineering elements of the book really stand-out. Lots of drawings of the early studies done to create the F-104 are included as well as various diagrams from the flight manual. This all serves to give a very hardcore technical edge to the book that many aviation related books often ignore. The development history is well documented as are various trials and tests that the F-104 has been used in over the years.
Another strong point is the selection of photographs, many of which I'd never seen before. There is a picture of just about every version of the airplane that was produced. There is also a great color section in the middle of the book that contaians additional outstanding color photos.
The area where the book seems to fall short of is namely in areas such as captions for pictures, several of which are just reused from a paragraph somewhere on the same page. Also, the ending paragraph in each chapter seems unnecessary (it's only a few sentences long) and often doesn't serve to really "close the chapter out." Also, many of the captions seem to misidentify some of the versions of the aircraft, which can seem trivial, but I would imagine that most people who would purchase this type of book will notice the errors.
All in all, this is a great book, especially for the price you pay. In my opinion, the errors in captions and the odd ending to a few of the chapters is greatly outweighed by the great technical detail that is presented in some sections as well as the outstanding selection of photographs.