Customer Reviews

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Directory of Airplanes, Their Designers and Manufactures

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This directory, according to the introduction, is a byproduct of the effort to reorganize "a century's worth of aviation documents" in the National Air and Space Museum files. The result is an alphabetical listing of some 5,000 manufacturers/designers which have produced roughly 25,000 discrete types or models of piloted aircraft, about which NASM presumably has some information. For example, "Ferguson, Charles J. (California)" is listed has having designed/produced the "Ferguson Glider". Likewise, some 60 iterations of the basic C-130 Hercules design are listed under "Lockheed (Burbank, CA)". However, this book is exactly what the title suggests--a directory. You'll find no further information about the Ferguson glider or any of the many Hercules variants between the prototype YC-130 and the latest AC-130U.

What you will find are very brief histories of those companies (Lockheed among them) which have been transformed over the years through mergers, name changes, and so forth. This can help the serious researcher unravel some of the complex "arrangements" that have been made in the aircraft business over the years, particularly concerning companies that have long since ceased to exist. As would be expected in a work of this type, there are also some bits of what might best be described as aeronautical trivia. On page 253 is listed "Schmuck Aircraft (See: Monarch)".

The last 65 pages consist of another alphabetical listing of aircraft by name. Thus we find that the "ABC Glider" was produced by Schultz and the "Zwergreiher (Heron)" is the name given to the Burgfalke Lo 100.

In summary, this directory will no doubt serve as a useful guide to those fortunate enough to actually access the NASM files, and hopefully it will soon be found on the reference shelves of most libraries. It will also be helpful to someone who's trying to figure out what company built the "Gnu", for example, but bear in mind that to find anything ABOUT the thousands of aircraft listed here, you'll have to keep looking.