Customer Reviews

Testing Death: Hughes Aircraft Test Pilots and Cold War Weaponry (Ausa)

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A great story about the testing of missles and the intergration of these missiles with the fighter aircraft of the era. George Marrett's style of writing makes for easy reading. He takes a highly technical subject and puts it into interesting narration for the layman to understand and enjoy.

George Marrett delivers another stunning book on the experiences of American test pilots, drawing on his own personal experiences from the Golden Age of flight testing. This is the first of two books Marrett has written about his experiences as a test pilot. The other book "Contrails Over the Mojave" follows his career in the Air Force. This book details his experiences working for the Hughes Aircraft Corporation.

Colonel John P. Stapp, who traveled 623 mph while testing rocket sleds in 1954, once said "The Cold War was won by aerospace companies that stayed well ahead of the Soviet Union in aircraft and weapons design and the civilian and military test pilots who risked their lives daily in the skies above Southern California to test the equipment. These test pilots often ended as unheralded casualties, the testing deaths of the war." Marrett agreed and began to write this story.

"Testing Death" details the development of many of the many Hughes weapons systems that can still be found on US military aircraft thirty years after their first development. The projects include such mainstays in the US arsenal as the Phoenix and Maverick missiles, to the predecessor of today's highly classified terrain mapping radars currently found on some American military aircraft. The other key element of the book focuses on the human element of flight testing. Marrett writes of his emotion highlights of his career; his despair of losing a friend in an aircraft accident; and his strange mix of anger and empathy for a friend who sells out his country because he has fallen on hard times.

This Hughes system-centric perspective of the book is the main difference from "Contrails Over the Mojave" which focuses on the actual flight testing of the Century series of aircraft. "Contrails Over the Mojave" also follows Marrett's Air Force career. There is some minor duplication of material between the books, however some very small duplication is necessary to provided adequate background information for each story which must stand on its own.

Any story related to the Hughes Aircraft Company will certainly have vignettes of the reclusive millionaire. Included with the accounts of Hughes' infamy, are witticisms about Hughes used to open each chapter. I personally do not know much about Hughes, but Marrett has certainly piqued my curiosity to learn more.

Marrett's easy-flowing writing style will appeal to most readers, although some parts of the book contain the word "Hughes" far too many times for a short passage. However, this is a minor annoyance for what is another outstanding book from George Marrett on the golden age of flight testing. My thanks to George Marrett for sharing his story.

Take it from a Former (33 years worth) Hughes Aircraft Company System Test Engineer who has worked directly with the author as well as most of the people he quotes. This book tells it like it is and in a very readable manner. He has a novelists way of presenting the truth!

The book is basically an autobiography of the author with respect to his flying career, and interspersed in between is the history of the Hughes Aircraft company, and also excerpts of the aviation career of the founder of the company, Howard Hughes.

There are a couple of things that make this book interesting: First is that the author is a pretty good writer. He uses simple words, and yet still is able to convey ideas and images very vividly.

And Marrett is not just any pilot: He is one of the main test pilots, for one of the biggest military avionics companies in the history of the United States. This means he had solid first hand information on some of the most advanced avionics, and most exotic aircrafts of their time.

From the all-weather interceptor, the F-86D Sabre Dog, to the F-111B Sea Pig, the AGM-65 Maverick, the F-14A, the F-16A, the B-2A Spirit, etc., Marrett had been involved in all of these programs in one way, or the other as part of the Hughes Corporation. As a result, there is a wealth of previously lesser known information about these systems.

For example, I didn't know that the AWG-9 Weapons System and AIM-54 Phoenix missile system that eventually became a legendary combination on the F-14 Tomcat was originally planned to be put in service on the F-111B Sea Pig, a little-known, short-lived fighter version of the F-111 Aardvark. Marrett also recounts the how the Soviets were able to steal F-16 aircraft radar technology from the Hughes company in the late 70s.

He also is able to put you in the cockpit and describe effectively how to fly those various aircrafts, or how to use some of the early versions of the weapons systems like the AGM-65 Maverick missile, or the Helmet Mounted Sight.

At any rate, this book is terrific, very readable, and just a treasure trove of information about some of the best weapons systems and aircrafts throughout the Cold War.

One of the best books about the Cold War I have ever read, A MUST HAVE, for military aviation enthusiasts.

I bought this book for my husband who is a volunteer at the Evergreen Aviation Museum. He raved about the information on military hardware made by the Hughes Organization after the passing of Howard Hughes. It was detailed with information easy to process but with a creative flare. The information gained will be shared many times in the future tours at the museum.

I was hoping to learn some aviation history from this book, but it was basically a collection of anecdotes ("war stories"). Fine if that's all you want, but not useful for my purposes. I agree with Kabanlit's longer review, I just weight it differently!

The book is very well written and covers the time period that I was working as an engineer on many of the programs and systems. The book covers the flight test aspect of these programs and brings back lots of memories. I would recommend the book highly for any former Hughes employee that worked during the period covered by the book. He also covers how Hughes Aircraft was founded and gives some history of Howard Hughes that I never knew before.

This book was well researched and well organized from start to finish, It was a little winded in some places, but the overall content was real and truthful, I should know I was there. John Abel