Books for the Aviator in Your Life

The effort to win the war began at home--and for the researchers at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, enhancing America's military aviation arsenal was the key to victory.

Formed in 1915, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics established itself over the next 25 years as one of the world's finest research organizations. When World War II began in 1939, the NACA employed a mere 500 workers and maintained a budget slightly in excess of $4 million. To meet the demands of the war, a special partnership was quickly forged between NACA researchers, industry designers, and military planners. The Langley laboratory possessed world class aeronautical research facilities and flight research operations, making it ideally suited to help America win the war.

Military historian Mark Chambers tells the story of the monumental task of developing the planes that spurred Allied victory in World War II.

With safety protocols in their infancy and the jet engine still in development, early commercial flight above American cities was too often deadly. Between December 1951 and January 1952, three separate plane crashes barreled down onto Elizabeth, New Jersey. Many dozens perished as the crashes destroyed entire city blocks and wreaked havoc throughout various neighborhoods. Frightened residents turned to the nearby Newark Airport for blame as a groundswell of political pushback occurred in an ultimately unsuccessful bid to stop the airport's expansion. President Truman formed an airport safety commission in response that recommended better zoning around airports and runways. Author Peter Zablocki tells the harrowing story of one of the most unique and tragic series of plane crashes in the nation's history.

The ingenious people of the Garden State were instrumental in the early development of the submarine. The first American submarine sank off Fort Lee in 1776, and the first successful one adopted by the U.S. Navy was invented by Paterson's John Holland at the end of the nineteenth century. Those early vessels were tested in the Passaic River and on the Jersey City waterfront. Today, the only surviving Union Civil War submarine, built in Newark, sits in the National Guard Militia Museum in Sea Girt. In 1918, the technology pioneered there was turned against the Jersey Shore when U-151 went on a one-day ship-sinking rampage. A World War II U-boat offensive torpedoed numerous ships off the coast, leaving oil-soaked beaches strewn with wreckage. Authors Joseph G. Bilby and Harry Ziegler reveal the remarkable history of submarines off the New Jersey coastline.

History Beyond Kitty Hawk

Millions of North Carolina license plates affirm the state’s claim of “First in Flight,” honoring the December 1903 accomplishment of the Wright brothers on the Outer Banks. Yet the history of aviation in North Carolina goes well beyond that first powered flight at Kitty Hawk. Numerous aviation inventors and innovators called the state home. North Carolina airports hosted legendary fliers like Charles Lindbergh, Eddie Rickenbacker and Amelia Earhart. During World War II, aviators trained at several military bases and flew patrols along the coast seeking enemy submarines. The state produced its own airlines, like Piedmont Airlines and Wheeler Airlines, and various sites across the state played aviation-related roles in the Cold War and the Space Race. Michael C. Hardy details the storied history of North Carolina in flight.

Boeing Air Transport, a precursor of United Air Lines, began carrying passengers in 1927 on small, uncomfortable airplanes with few amenities. Steve Stimpson, manager of Boeing's San Francisco office, considered hiring stewards to alleviate passengers' concerns. Ellen Church convinced him that employing women, especially nurses, as stewardesses would be a visionary solution. Eight brave young women entered Boeing's brief training program in Cheyenne in May 1930, making them the first airline stewardesses in the world. In 1947, United Air Lines established its Stewardess Training Center in Cheyenne, operating for nearly two decades. Authors Starley Talbott and Michael Kassel celebrate the world's first stewardesses, as well as the thousands who followed in their footsteps.

The history of one of the most important airports in the US comes to life in over 150 historical photos.

In 1942, a stretch of Illinois prairie that had served as a battleground and a railroad depot became the site of a major manufacturing plant, producing Douglas C-54 Skymasters for World War II. Less than twenty years later, that plot of land boasted the biggest and busiest airport in the world. Many of the millions who have since passed through it have likely only regarded it as a place between cities. But for people like Michael Branigan, who has spent years on its tarmac, they know that O'Hare is a city unto itself, with a fascinating history of gangsters and heroes, mayors, presidents and pilots.

To book a ride on the World's Shortest Airline or learn aerial stunts from the redheaded widow of Lawrence Avenue, you've got to go through the airports buried beneath the housing developments and shopping malls of Chicagoland. Many of these airports sprang up after World War I, when training killed more pilots than combat, and the aviation pioneers who developed Chicago's flying fields played a critical role in getting the nation ready to dare the skies in World War II. Author Nick Selig has rolled wheels on his fair share of Chicago's landing strips but faces an entirely new challenge in touching down in places being swallowed by a city and forgotten by history.

Situated in the sand dunes of California's Central Coast, Space Launch Complex Ten, often called SLC-10 or Slick Ten, is a National Historic Landmark that commemorates a powerful Cold War legacy. Home to Vandenberg's Space and Missile Technology Center, or SAMTEC, the facility contains the rich technological heritage of the U.S. Air Force's space and missile launch systems. As the only remaining Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile launch site in the world, SLC-10's noteworthy achievements span the globe. The complex trained British Royal Air Force missileers for Project EMILY, assisted during nuclear atmospheric tests in the Pacific and launched military weather satellites in support of the covert National Reconnaissance Program. Former air force space and missile officer Joseph T. Page II introduces these amazing stories of dedicated men and women who led the American military effort to explore space.

In 1955, the Central Intelligence Agency established a clandestine base of operations in the Nevada desert with a mission to protect the United States from a growing communist threat. Special projects at Area 51 were shrouded in mystery, and the first was one of the world's most famous spy planes, the U-2. It fueled half-truths, rumors and legends for more than half a century. Now with many details of that endeavor declassified, the real story can finally be told. Author and Area 51 veteran TD Barnes sifts fact from fiction in one of America's most protected origin stories.

Author Billy J. Singleton sets readers on a captivating course through the history of Cotton State aviation.  From the dreamers who envisioned flight decades before the Wright Brothers achieved it at Kitty Hawk to the international space race, Alabama has been at the forefront of aviation. Delve into the obscure and forgotten stories of the state’s aeronautical heritage, including an encounter over Montgomery that initiated an investigation by the Air Force, Eleanor Roosevelt’s aerial tour of the Tuskegee Institute in a two-seat training aircraft and the miracle of Eastern Flight 002. Recall the lost squadron of Gunter Field, the Alabama pilot recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most experienced aviator in history and the college administration that constructed an airport to obtain a gymnasium.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, aerialist Ivy Baldwin had achieved celebrity status as a premier tightrope walker, aeronaut and aviation pioneer. He executed astonishing and perilous performances across America and internationally, including Mexico and the Far East. First by flying balloons, he went on to pilot dirigibles and, finally, aircraft. In his later years in Colorado, he became famous for crossing canyons on a tightrope. Historian Jack Stokes Ballard deftly captures Baldwin's colorful and hazardous life from childhood runaway to aviation record holder.

During World War II, thousands of volunteer combat aviators trained at places like Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and Hancock Field in Santa Maria. Some air cadets and WASPs—young women pilots—lost their lives in training accidents. The graduates would go on to fight in both the Pacific and European theaters. They faced flak bursts and collisions that resulted in horrifying explosions and were sent on strafing runs that made them targets in a lethal shooting gallery. Downed airmen encountered both unexpected kindness and cruel deprivation as prisoners of war. Through interviews and official records, Jim Gregory tells the stories of heroic Central Coast veterans who fought a war that stretched from New Guinea to North Africa.