Customer Reviews

Military Aircraft Boneyards

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

 

 

This book provides an overview of how the USAAF reduced its warplane inventory after the end of the Second World War. As an overview, there is less detail than most historians - professional and amateur - but when compared with other books addressing this subject, this one is the definitve version.

Coverage includes the big yards - such as Chino/Ontario, Kingman, Altus, Davis-Monthan and Litchfield Park - as well as individual aircraft. A job really well done.

As usual Nick Veronico's love for his subject has shown itself in his book Military Aircraft Boneyards. Mr.Veronico has written about military aircraft boneyards in such detail it is hard to walk away from the book, especially given the outstanding photos that range all the way from right after WWI all the way through the present. While most aviation enthusiasts will fixate on the fantastic photos of piles of vintage aircraft stacked up like cord-wood or will cry over photos of now-extinct aircraft types being chopped into pieces Mr.Veronico also delivers a detailed history on the development of aircraft salvage and reclamation as it pertains to today's military and commercial operations. This is a fun book to pick up, it certainly stimulates the imagination, the little-boy in every man will come out as he dreams of jumping in the cockpit of his favorite aircraft and soaring off into the vast blue sky saving one more plane from becoming his next six pack of beer.

This is my second purchase of "Boneyards" and it took me a while to find. The story of how and why this victorious country amassed and destroyed tens of thousands of WW2 aircraft after the war has always fascinated this reader. Narrative is very well written, but pictures of the storage fields are amazing. If you're interested in the War, aviation, a necessary process of destruction involving an enormous inventory of aircraft, not all of it worn out, this is a keeper!

This book is as facinating as it is informative. The hundreds of pictures are absolutly stunning and the captions are informative and well written. The book is a great look at not only aircraft preservation, but also the scrapping and recycling of those once proud aircraft that served with distinction. It begins with the history of the aircraft reclamation industry in it's infancy, after World War I, thru World War II, on to the conflicts in Asia, The Cold War, and then to today (Year 2000). The visualizations are stunning, the most memorable being a B-17 bomber with the "chopper" hovering only a few feet above the center of the fuesalage. The authors take you on a tour of the great scrap yards of yesterday and today, drawing you in, and making you wish you could walk the rows of B-24s, B-17s, P-51s, F-84s, F-4s, C-147s, and countless others and learn about the historic and heroic past of each of them. I highly recommend this book to ANY avaition fan or anyone even remotly interesed in military aircraft of the past 100 years.