Longtime photojournalist. author, illustrator, editor.
I am a photographer by education, training, experience, and inclination. I have worked for newspapers and wire services up and down the East Coast. Among many other media outlets, my work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, Newsday, Road&Track, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Jose Mercury.
In past lives I was director of photography in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI; and Augusta, Georgia. I was the last photo editor of The Richmond News Leader and subsequently associate photo director of the remaining Richmond newspaper.
I most recently was Senior Editor of Proceedings and Naval History magazines of the U.S. Naval Institute and an editor and writer for the U.S. Marine Corps, History Division, Quantico, Virginia. I am currently a writer and editor for the Navy's Naval History and Heritage Command at the Washington Navy Yard. It was my privilege to edit the official centenary history volumes of both Navy and Marine Corps aviation.
My favorite subjects are aviation, naval history, and automobiles. Most of what you will see on these pages reflects those interests.
As beloved as the Tomcat is in many Navy aviation circles and in portions of the general public, there are a few remaining on active duty, but with a potential adversary—Iran.
Norman Polmar’s article goes into that. All I will share here is my work on the images of two of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF).
My primary source for the drawings was Tom Cooper and Farzad Bishop’s Iranian F-14 Tomcat Units in Combat, #49 in the Osprey Combat Aircraft Series.
I also used a number of images from the internet, primarily from Airliners.net, which has many international contributors.
One interesting sidelight to the Iranian use of the Tomcat is their testing of U.S. Army MIM-23 Hawk missiles, provided to them during the Iran-Contra Affair, as air-to-air missiles.
This was unusual enough that I chose to include it on one of the drawings.
If you have any interest at all in U.S. Naval Aviation, this is the book—in two volumes—that you should have. And I cannot stress this hard enough—IT IS FREE!
I am sick of charlatans reprinting U.S. Government publications—that you have already paid for with your tax dollars—taking the free pdfs from the government web sites and using print-on-demand to provide unsuspecting consumers with an ersatz product.
I wrote a review for the book spelling this out and it was rejected. I’ll have that review below, but this is the supporting information.
This is the hit page on Amazon for the search “United States Naval Aviation 1910-2010”:
I’ll refer to the entries, from left, as 1 through 5.
Let’s start with #2, with no image available. It is not available because this is (supposedly) the official Navy printed book. Its description says so (Publisher). Note its weight and that it is a hardcover. Both are correct for the book as published by the Navy. Note that none of the others are hardcover. The Navy NEVER PRINTED soft cover. The ONLY other OFFICIAL U.S. Government printed version is done by the Government Publishing Office (GPO).This is only available in soft cover and costs $94 for both volumes.
Under the Amazon listing for this hardcover version are just five offerings. One for a tick over $25 and the rest right around $250. I’m assuming that the higher priced versions are the actual official book. (Since those were only given to admirals and offices, wonder who is making bucks off these?) The $26.67 version peaked my interest, so I’ve ordered it, prepared to return it if it is not official. I’ll let you know what I find.
#1, 3, and 5 have reasonable prices, but as I noted they are neither hardbound nor official. Here they are in order. Note the publisher and page count of each. The original has nearly 1,300 pages.
Just so you know the source of all this information [and my upset], I was Lead Editor of Scholarly Publications at NHHC. This was my book from start to finish. I approved the book at every step from editing through production.
Once they have downloaded the files, they simply stick a cover on it (thus the different covers you see on the Amazon splash page) and post it for sale. When they get an order they send the pdf to their print-on-demand (POD) printer of choice and have them send you the book. You can do exactly the same thing. If you want to have one printed for yourself, you can save a lot of money by linking with your own POD printer.
What have they invested in this money-making scheme? Nothing except the time it takes to download the files, stick a cover on, and email the file to their printer. They are doing this for thousands of government publications that are in reality FREE to you, the taxpayer.
I did not discuss #4 because it is a Kindle edition. Neither the Navy nor GPO has published a Kindle version. But the process is only slightly different. In this case the “publisher” has paid (or done the work themselves) to have the pdfs converted. Once they get the Kindle file, it is readily duplicated and sent out as needed. Again, no real work or outlay on their part.
This is the background. Here is my rejected review:
There is one caveat to reprinting government publications: It is permissible provided you have written approval from the government agency that published the original and that you file for a new ISBN. No one ever contacted us about reprinting with the exception of GPO (who even have to follow the rules above). I further doubt they even know what an ISBN is.
I just remembered I never told you about the book… It is two volumes, the first written by Navy historian Mark L. Evans is a chronology of the century of Naval Aviation. It is thus the definitive Navy statement of what happened, when, and where. The second volume, by retired Navy historian Roy A. Grossnick, is titled “Statistics.” It includes virtually everything anyone would like to know about Navy air, from a complete breakdown of BuNos, to carrier and squadron deployments, to Navy aviators in space. Thus this, too, is the official Navy word on these topics.
Anyway, there you have it. The link to the FREE pages is embedded above. Please check it out if you like Navy aviation.
And so I have witnesses, this is what I ordered from Amazon for $26.67: a used, very good condition, former library book (why are they getting rid of such a substantial and current resource?). It is hardcover and printed by DON. Let’s see if it is the real thing.
Although the majority of the work was done in Illustrator, I did use Strata 3D for some of the smaller detail work, primarily the missiles. Drawings of the AIM-7 Sparrow III that I had were not very detailed, but good enough for the scale of the aircraft.
The drawings I had of the AIM-9 Sidewinder, however, had a surfeit of detail and therefore resulted in a better model.
The same was true for the AIM-54 Phoenix.
All too often, however, details—such as a reasonable representation of the ejection seats—are forgotten. I did not have a good 3-view of the Tom’s GRU-7A seat, but starting from an outline and referencing photographs such as the two below, I was able to at least create a flat view of the seat. It is reasonably accurate (per the photos) and good enough for the work required.
Because I wanted to the Tomcat both clean and with the gear down, canopy up, and refueling probe out, I chose two different squadrons, VF-1, the first to receive the ‘Cat, and VF-84, because they sported the classiest marks around.
I worked from about 25 photographs such as these from VF-1:
The work marks looked like this:
Before resulting in this:
I used fewer than a dozen photos from VF-84. Primarily because I did not need to look for the standard marks such as national insignia and placards. Here are a few:
They resulted in this (again pretty thin because of the standard marks):
Norman Polmar’s contribution to his Historic Aircraft series in the April 2012 issue of Naval History was one of his most ambitious. It covered three pages instead of the usual two and featured two of my illustrations. Could the F-14 Tomcat deserve anything less?
It also was the perhaps the most complex project for me because there is so much information available about the Tom. There was so much to work with that the first difficult aspect of the project was selecting a base drawing to work from. In the end, it turned out to be base drawings. I ended up with 15 folders of work that included nearly 40 base drawings and hundreds of photographs.
These are a few of my reference drawings.
I think the Japanese do some of the best line work and drew primarily on Famous Aircraft of the World Volume 83 of March 1977 and Volume 89 of September 1977. The Russians also do good work. I used a couple of their books as well. I’ve never been impressed by Kinzey’s work, most of his drawings are little detailed, but I did have his F-14 In Detail & Scale, as well as all the usual offering by Squadron Signal for generic information. Danny Coremans’sUncovering the Grumman F-14 A/B/D Tomcatis a fantastic picture book that provides a wealth of detail information. Cannot recommend it highly enough.
Because again of time, I opted for 2D. This was a lot of fun because it forced me to work with the interaction of compound curves and light. Still not a master but the end results are acceptable.
This Burgess Company-built Curtiss N-9H was powered by a 150-hp
Hispano-Suiza engine and thus received the H suffix. It was received by the
Navy on 24 June 1918 and flew only 74 hours and 25 minutes before being
stricken from the Navy List on 12 February 1919. Its “body” was broken in two
behind the rear seat after a crash at Miami, Florida, on 5 February during a
“fast landing.”
I also illustrate aircraft for Norman Polmar’s long-running column, Historic Aircraft, in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Naval History magazine. Depending upon the subject (primarily how much information is available) and time constraints, I will create it in 2D software with a combination of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, or 3D using Strata Design working from Illustrator lines.
I found some rather nice drawings for source images in the February/March 1966 issue of Air Progress drawn by Bob Parks.
While there is adequate information to make a 3D version of the drawings, deadlines on other projects turned this into a 2D drawing.
Because I like to do specific aircraft that have something of a history or story behind them I research serial numbers (known in the Navy as Bureau Numbers or BuNo). My primary source for BuNos is the U.S. Navy’s official reference United States Naval Aviation 1910–2010, a book that I happened to edit. Very few were printed and they are virtually impossible to come by, however, the excellent news is that the book is available FREE in pdf form to anyone.
An alternative—and extremely worthwhile and accurate—site is Joe Baugher’s aviation site. I have it bookmarked because I use it so often and it has yet to fail me.
From there I looked for the Navy’s Aircraft Record cards. Short of doing research at the Naval History and Heritage Command archives, they have a fair number of early cards, filed as Aircraft History cards. Sadly, because of lack of resources and time, only aircraft A-52 to A-3999 cards are available online. Gladly, this was good enough for me.
It was going to be hard to pick a particular N-9H, virtually all had the same story—crashed, damaged, or otherwise lost during training. I settled on BuNo A-2453 manufactured by the Burgess Company of Marblehead, Massachusetts, in June 1918. It existed for barely nine months before being written off at Miami in February 1919.
The record card states: “Body broken in two back of rear seat. Radiator damaged beyond repair. Bottom sucked off of pontoon. Plane sank and nosed over after making a fast landing. Tail was broken off in righting the plane to tow it in.” It only had 74 hours and 25 minutes of flying time.
The subject of my second column was a little personal. My wife’s uncle lowered himself into the Philippine Sea hand-over-hand on a line from the bow after “abandon ship” was announced. It was the second time during the war that Petty Officer Ashley Cherry had a ship sunk from under him. The first was at Pearl Harbor’s berth F-12 on 7 December 1941 aboard Raleigh (CL-7).
The little CVE should be remembered. She was lost at the Battle of Off Samar on 25 October 1944, the first major victim of a Japanese kamikaze plane during the first organized suicide mission. Few know of the destruction of St. Lo because her loss was overshadowed by that of her sister, Gambier Bay (CVE-73). She was lost the same day to Japanese cruisers, becoming the sole U.S. carrier sunk by enemy surface ships.
Within two minutes of being struck by the kamikaze, a major explosion blew St. Lo‘s after elevator skyward and destroyed much of the after section of the ship’s flight deck. (U.S. Naval Institute)
The Action Report of St. Lo‘s loss at the Battle Off Samar.
Profile of sister ship Thetis Bay (CVE-90). [HNSA]Island of sister ship Thetis Bay (CVE-90). [HNSA]A detail drawing of a CVE’s island. [ (c) J. M. Caiella ]Sections of sister ship Thetis Bay (CVE-90). [HNSA]A detail drawing of a CVE’s funnel. [ (c) J. M. Caiella ]St. Lo (CVE-63) as she appeared at the time of her sinkiing. Measure 32, Design 15A camouflage. [ [ (c) J. M. Caiella ]Starboard side drawing prepared by the Bureau of Ships for a camouflage scheme intended for aircraft carriers of the CVE-55 Casablanca class. [NHHC 80-G-170033]Port side drawing prepared by the Bureau of Ships for a camouflage scheme intended for aircraft carriers of the CVE-55 Casablanca class. [NHHC 80-G-170034]The Measure 32 colors were 5-P Pale Gray, 5-L Light Gray, 5-O Ocean Gray, and BK Dull Black. The decks were 20-B Deck Blue. [ (c) J. M. Caiella ]This is a generic photograph of the stern mounted 5 inch/38-caliber dual-purpose mount common to most CVEs including St. Lo. [U.S. Naval Institute]Aircraft assigned to the St. Lo. [St. Lo Association]
When I took over Naval History‘s Historic Fleets column, one of the first things Editor-in-Chief Richard Latture did was change its title to Historic Ships, which is more in keeping with the piece’s focus.
For my very first column, I chose Wampanoag, a ship very few have heard of, but one that should be known as it was in all respects the progenitor of what later became known as battle cruisers.
As with so many of the early ships, especially those that have relegated to the back pages of history, documentation is thin. For this piece, I relied on Navy and Congressional reports. This from 1868 provided much information.
These line drawings are contemporary with the ship. Regrettably, my recording of sources at this time was deficient, so I cannot direct you to the source. It may have been from The Century magazine.This drawing, most likely based on the above drawing was published by Proceedings in December 1937, page 1734. Note how compact (low) the engines and boilers arePhotographs of Wampanoag are rare and good ones are non-existent. This image of the ship at the New York Navy Yard, according to its source, the Naval History and Heritage Command, could be one of two things. The photo’s original mat has a date of 1874. In March 1874, the ship now renamed Florida, departed New York to become a receiving and store ship at New London Naval Station, Connecticut. This may show her after her refitting for that purpose. It is possible, however, than given her “new” condition appearance, this may have been taken in the winter of 1868, at the time of her trials. (NHHC NH 54159)
Perhaps the best extant photograph of the ship was most likely taken at the New York Navy Yard, c. 1869. (NHHC NH 76423)
This very poor image, also from the New York Navy Yard, probably in 1866, shows (from left) Wampanoag, fitting out; a screw gunboat of the Cayuga or Kansas class; Madawaska, preparing for trials; Susquehanna;Idaho, laid up after her unsuccessful trials (across the channel from Wampanoag): two “Double-Ender” sidewheel gunboats; and Vermont. (NHHC NH 85970)This painting by J. C. Roach is entitled “An Incident of the Late War with Great Britain . . . USS Wampanoag Escaping from the Channel Fleet after Destroying the Halifax Convoy, July Fourth, 1866.” It depicts the ship performing her designed mission in an imaginary conflict. (NHHC NH 95699-KN)An engraving of the ship show her under both sail and steam. (Source Unrecorded)This very clean etching may have been based on photo NH 76423. (Source Unrecorded)
I haven’t posted in all of 2018. A lot has happened, but now that I have allegedly retired, I’m going to try to be more religious about posting.
Let’s see if we can do something with current projects.
Richard Latture, Editor-in-Chief of the U.S. Naval Institute‘s Naval History magazine, is working on a project to be printed in conjunction with the release of a new Tom Hanks movie, Greyhound, about destroyer combat in the North Atlantic during World War II. The film uses the destroyer Kidd (DD-661), which is on display in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as part of the setting. Although Fletcher-class destroyers served almost exclusively in the Pacific, there are no extant examples of the Gleaves and Benson classes, which would be representative of the Atlantic destroyers.
Former USS Kidd (DD-661) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
My assignment was to do a cutaway drawing of the Kidd. This is by far my most intense project. First thing is I knew it would not be 100 percent. That goes completely against the way I want to work, but it is a reality. That is simply a given when a deadline is staring you in the face along with little details such as time and money. The goal is to get the important parts right and live with representations or approximations for those that aren’t. Bottom line: it is not a photograph.
In starting a project, I collect as many base drawings as possible. This is, sadly, where the first compromises enter the project. Drawings simply do not match up. I have a fairly extensive collection of books to rely on for the initial search. I know which authors to trust and how much Kentucky windage needs to be used on other authors’ work. (One, whom shall not be named, has a great reputation for plans and models, but his plan view lines do not link with his profiles and sections. Where did he got that rep?) I check their sources, if available, for additional information.
Less than a tenth of my collection.
I also have a decent collection of drawings that I’ve obtained from various sources primarily the National Archives and the Library of Congress. I was fortunate in this instance to trip over a collection of several hundred drawings on microfilm of the Fletcher-class. However, another caveat creeps in.
Fletchers were built at 11 different yards. And they were not identical. The plans I found were from the Bath Iron Works in Maine. Kidd was built by Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Kearny, New Jersey. I know the two sets of plans are not identical. I just don’t know what is different and where.
Even though I have these great drawings, they provide another three caveats.
1. Bath built at least three, and possibly four, different sets of Fletchers, known today as “flights.” There are detail differences between each. Assuming the same for Federal, which flight would match most closely to Kidd?
2. Even within these set of Bath drawings, the profiles, sections, and plan views do not match among flights for general outlines. I assume this is because of the microfilming process.
3. Many of the drawings needed to be combined; i.e., there were multiple frames of one drawing. Again, in linking these, there were dimensional differences and adjacent images would not be 100 percent in alignment.
The first three images need to be combined to form one complete drawing.
So, just in selecting whcih drawings tomwork from forces a number of decisions to be made, each of them getting the result farther from what is accurate.
Nineteen years ago I wrote the piece below. The Associated Press picked it up and it was published around the country. I had hoped that it would encourage others to—either on their own birthday or Veteran’s Day—do a brief search of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial site. Even if they didn’t personally participate, or are or were related to someone who went, or are even too young to know what the war was, this is a very simple way to make a very personal connection.
The 19 men I write about below were born on the same day I was. We never knew each other, but we are brothers.
I encourage you. Go to thewall-usa.com. Search your birthdate. Learn something about those who shared something with you. Learn about their sacrifices. You will forever see their faces.
___________________________
12 November 1998
Yesterday was Veterans’ Day. Today is my birthday. I turn 50.
My service tour ended in 1970, and while it was nothing like that experienced by those you are about to cross paths with, I’ve never forgotten those days.
Today, I will be singing Happy Birthday not for myself, but for 19 of my brothers who were born today, 50 years ago, only six of whom made it to the age of maturity.
Their names are carved in black granite for, I hope, ever.
I would greatly appreciate it if you would read their names and think something about them. If you are familiar with the part of the country they called home, have a fleeting glimpse of the countryside or town that lost them forever. If nothing else, just read their names.
James Edward Widener was the first taken. Like me, he was a James, a New Yorker, an upstater, from Churchville, near Rochester, just 90 miles away from my home in Syracuse. The 18-year-old Marine private first class’s tour ended the same day it began, June 11, 1967, in Quang Tri province when his helicopter crashed.
Loyd Eugene Kinsworthy, a 19-year-old Marine corporal from San Jose, Calif., had been in-country only two months. He was killed by a mine in Quang Nam on April 27, 1968. He was the only one of this group who was married.
William Roger Campbell was from Butler, Penn. A Marine private first class, he died June 6, 1968 in Quang Tri province. He was seven months into his tour when his unit was ambushed. He was the last to die before I was drafted two weeks later.
Jonathon Jeffrey Hawkins of South Bend, Ind., was the first draftee of this group to die. A private first class with the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, he was killed in a firefight in Quang Ngai on Oct. 10, 1968.
The next two, from widely divergent backgrounds, shared a common military history and fate, on the same day, Dec. 4, 1968. Both were single, draftees and Army PFCs. They died less than a month after turning 20.
Blair William Two Crow, from Kyle, S.D., a Native American, was serving with the 11th Light infantry Brigade when he died in Quang Ngai.
Gary Norman Whipple, of Claremont, N.H., was serving with the 1st Infantry Division when a mine claimed him in Binh Duong. He had left the “world” barely a month earlier.
Henry Eugene Maul was born and raised in Worland, Wyo. He died in a firefight in Tay Ninh on Dec. 22, 1968. He was also a draftee private first class serving with the 25th Infantry Division.
James Alfred Luckey, a draftee specialist 4th-class from Ft. Myers, Fla., was serving with the 9th Infantry Division when he was killed in a firefight Jan. 25, 1969, in Dinh Tuong. He had been in-country only four months.
Christopher Mitchell was the only black and first regular Army soldier in this group to die. A private first class from Chicago, he was serving with the 9th Infantry Division on Feb. 7, 1969, when he died exactly one month after entering the country. Two weeks later, my service in Korea began.
Donald Ray Bartley of Lizton, Ind., was a Marine private first class who died in a Quang Nam firefight on March 19, 1969, exactly two months after joining his unit.
Allen Tyler was the only Virginian in this group. From Montvale, he was a draftee corporal with the 1st Cavalry Division. He died in Tay Ninh on May 8, 1969.
Eric Daryl Nadeau of Grand Forks, N.D., was the second and last regular Army soldier in the group. The specialist 4th-class was serving with the 101st Airborne Brigade when he was killed in a firefight on May 26, 1969 in Quang Tin.
Gary Lee Evans was a draftee Army sergeant serving with the 191st Airborne Brigade as well. The Pebworth, Ky., native was a month away from going home when his helicopter crashed in Quang Nam on Sept. 3, 1969.
Thomas Stephen Stafford of Port Huron, Mich., is the only sailor and reservist among the group. The seaman had just seen his 21st birthday the month before when he was killed in Kien Phong on Dec. 21, 1969 by artillery fire.
Don Ray Heimark, a draftee Army sergeant from Lomita, Calif., was killed by artillery fire in Thua Thien on April 1, 1970. He was serving with the 101st Airborne Brigade. The week before he died, I was back in the States and released from service.
Gerald Wayne Hay of Cincinnati, died in a firefight April 24, 1970 in Phuoc Tuy. He was a draftee private first class serving with the 25th Infantry Division.
Peter Francis Nolan was killed in a firefight on May 8, 1970 with barely a month left in his tour. The draftee specialist 5th-class from Springfield, Mass., was serving with the 101st Airborne Brigade in Thua Thien.
Mahlon Lewis Kelley was a Marine sergeant from Orlando, Fla. He died in Quang Nam on June 6, 1970 from rocket or grenade fragments.
Robert Eugene Tucker was the last to die. He was six days past his 22nd birthday when his helicopter was shot down on Nov. 18, 1970 in Quang Nam. The Abbyville, Kan., native was a Marine Corps lance corporal. Ten days after he died, my wife Cinda and I were married.
Thank you for sharing our birthday with us. I am certain the guys on the Wall thank you as well.
When your birthday comes up, take a minute—just a minute—to think of those on the Wall who could be sharing it with you—or more especially, with their families and friends. You’ll make your birthday a little more special.
Not a birthday goes by that I don’t think of these guys. You are not fogotten. Happy Birthday!
(The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at thewall-usa.com makes it easy for you to find those who were born on your birthday. Take a look. If you’ve never seen their site, it is as about as moving as The Wall itself. Please take a few minutes to share your birthday with those who would be—and should be—celebrating as well.)
Development of the Navy’s First Supersonic Jet Fighter
By William D. Spidle
Specialty Press, 2017. 226 pages. $44.95.
Vought F-8 Crusader is the first book by a blogger/researcher with respectable credentials, William D. Spidle. With 40 years in aviation as a licensed A&P mechanic and manager, he is a past president and editor of the F-4 Phantom Society. As he also worked for Vought, he has a vested interest in their aircraft. His blog, http://voughtworks.blogspot.com/, and now this book, represents some of his research with the Vought Aircraft Heritage Foundation (voughtheritage@vought.org) archives.
The book’s narrative, significantly, follows its subhead: Development of the Navy’s First Supersonic Jet Fighter. With the operative word being “development,” it traces the aircraft’s history beginning with a gleam in the eye of Chance Vought Aircraft’s general manager Fredrick Detweiler to convince the Navy that there was “no substitute for the highest possible performance” in their next aircraft. There was no reason a carrier-based aircraft had to play second fiddle to land-based fighters.
The path to parity—and even superiority—is thoroughly and comprehensively described, as are the waypoints of record setting flights. What the reader will not find are squadron histories, operational deployments, and combat actions. Those are deviations from the book’s purpose. And, while there are many well-researched and well-written books readily available on those accounts, nothing out there at this point rivals the documentation and focus of this book.
A quick look at any book’s notes and bibliography is a valid basic guide to evaluating a book’s content. Both are very good indicators of the veracity and depth of the text. If Wiki and the web show up, the author did nothing to advance his research and, more importantly, the reader’s knowledge. While there is no bibliography in this book—a possible clue that secondary sources; i.e., books written by others about the topic, were not a significant factor in this work—every source cited in the end notes is primary, be it a company program plan, report, investigation, or personal letter. What these reveal to the reader are the rationales behind the methodology and decision making for the Crusader. It doesn’t get much more authentic than this.
Supporting all this are drawings, photographs, charts, facts, and figures that define virtually every step from preliminary discussions to the premier fighter aircraft the Crusader became. These include pre-project and “paper”—what-if—projects, development of its variable-incidence wing, its rocket pack, and significant coverage of mock-up and tooling and “coking”—application of the Richard Whitcomb’s “area rule” principle for trans-sonic drag reduction in form of fuselage shaping reminiscent of the trademarked Coca-Cola bottle.
All these points address why we read books—we seek to learn what we do not know. And the author has provided that information in spades. SpecialtyPress addresses the how we read books.
I have written about the press’s “typical” 10-inch-square-format, approximately 200-page, glossy white paper aero books. And I reiterate and quote myself: “typical” is not condescending; here, it means quality and expectation—many high quality, often large, well-reproduced photographs, and crisp, clean reproduction with graphics that ease the reader through the text. How we read this book is a joy.
And again, I am happy to see that Mike Machat is the book’s editor. His presence buttresses the book with an imprimatur of accuracy, authenticity, and readability. SpecialtyPress has done themselves—and us, as readers—a very great service.
This is a very good book. It addresses a well-known and well-documented aircraft from a unique viewpoint, thus advancing the literature of the Vought F-8 Crusader. If you have a number of F-8 books in your collection, without this one, you will be “out of fighters.”
