Customer Reviews

P-51: bomber escort (Ballantine's illustrated history of the violent century. Weapons book)

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This is primarily a fan book. The auther gushes about impressive characteristics of the aircraft, while missing the short commings. There is no mention of the fact that P-51 pilots were fighting mostly inexperienced pilots that late in the war. Not especially useful as a detailed historical treatment of the subject or as an introduction. There are a good number of factual errors. The author writes with distant familiarity on the subject, as though minimal research was conducted. The development of the P-51 is quite an interesting story, but not well covered here. Also, minimal coverage of actual use in combat (compared to the voluminous available memoir materials). You could say the narative supports the pictures fairly well. This is not up to the usual high standards set by the publisher.

This book is about the P-51 Mustang.Produced during World War II, this fighter defeat Luftwaffe, even in Berlin's skies in 1944 and 1945.With range, velocity far better than any non-jet fighter of axis.Used also against Japan in 1945, P-51 remains the best propeler fighter ever produced in human history.The failures of this book are small.To exemple, this book "forgets" the fact that P-51 mustang was used to shoot its machine guns against civilians in nazi Germany , mainly in 1944 and 1945.

If you read a book by american general Chuck Yeager, he will tell you this P-51 use against defenseless german civilians.