Books for the Aviator in Your Life

The eyes of the United States Navy first focused on Quincy's Squantum peninsula in 1909, when daring young pilots from around the world gathered for the Harvard Air Meet. By the 1930s, the Victory Plant--a destroyer plant that set production records--had come and gone and the navy had set up the nation's first naval reserve aviation training center on the site. When air traffic over Boston Harbor thickened in the 1930s, the navy moved its aerial operations inland to the South Weymouth Naval Air Station. That base and its ubiquitous hangar became South Shore landmarks for more than a half-century. Squantum and South Weymouth Naval Air Stations brings back to life the early age of naval aviation on the South Shore, from biplanes to blimps to bombers and beyond.

Including more than two hundred vintage photographs and illustrations, Portsmouth Harbor's Military and Naval Heritage chronicles the history of the Piscataqua River's naval shipyard and harbor defenses. Long before it became home to one of the U.S. Navy's first federal shipyards, the harbor at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Kittery, Maine, was protected by gun batteries, mainly at Fort Point, New Castle, New Hampshire. By the end of World War II, modern concrete batteries mounting guns of ever longer range had been constructed at this and three other forts straddling the river's mouth. These fortifications reflected the increasingly important role of the shipyard, dedicated after 1917 to building submarines that contributed significantly to the World War II victory.

Over 200 photographs help paint the picture of the career of Igor I. Sikorsky, one of the most talented and versatile aeronautical pioneers in history.

This book traces the history of Sikorsky aviation and its founder, Igor I. Sikorsky, whose career spanned over 60 years and was highlighted by three major achievements: the creation of the world's first four-engine airliner, the record-breaking Clipper Ships, with which Pan American Airways explored transpacific and transatlantic airline service, and the development of the helicopter. Sikorsky then led his engineers out of the piston-engine era and into the jet age with the design and development of some of the most widely used turbine-powered helicopters in aviation history. Hundreds of photographs, many from the Sikorsky family archives, document the genius of Sikorsky's intuitive engineering, including his lifelong interest in the challenge of the helicopter, which many historians consider to be his crowning achievement.

The Coast Guard's deepest roots run through Massachusetts, the ancestral home to three of the five predecessor agencies that make up the service today. The Coast Guard formed in 1915 and since that time has served the citizens of the Bay State at lifeboat stations, air stations, lighthouses, LORAN stations, and radio stations, as well as on lightships and cutters of all sizes. They have protected the Massachusetts coastline during numerous wars, performing some of the most dramatic rescues in American history--from the Pendleton to the Argo Merchant to the Etrusco and more. The story of the Coast Guard in Massachusetts is one of heroism, honor, respect, and devotion to duty.

The US Naval Air Station, Quonset Point, RI, was originally built as a Neutrality Patrol Seaplane Base.

The base eventually became a unique and fundamentally important asset to the American armed forces. In World War II, more than one half of all U-boats sunk by U. S. aviation--including the first two--were destroyed by Quonset-trained shore and carrier-based squadrons. In the years following World War II, Quonset remained a premier industrial naval air station, sending squadrons or overhauling equipment for use in the Korean, Vietnam, and Cold War conflicts. For thirty-four years and through four wars, the Quonset Point Naval Air Station stood proud and tall on behalf of the United States military.

Shortly after the Wright brothers took to the air, aviation fever gripped Massachusetts. The biggest names in the industry, including Wilbur Wright, Glenn Curtiss, and Claude Graham-White, among others, flew in for the first major air shows, further exciting the people of the Bay State about the potential of manned flight in the realms of military tactics, the expansion of commerce, and even personal transportation. By the 1920s, Massachusetts had become home to the first Naval Air Reserve Base, in Quincy; one of the first Coast Guard Air Stations, in Gloucester; and the Boston Airfield, which would become the largest international airport in New England. Within a few decades, individuals like Edward Lawrence Logan, Frank Otis, Oscar Westover, and Laurence G. Hanscomb would permanently leave their names on the Massachusetts landscape in connection with the airports and airfields still used today.