Edward Garboczi
Tag: Book Review
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Human beings have dreamed of flight for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk made this dream happen in 1903 at the beginning of the 20th century, within the memory of my grandparents. Today, in the early 21st century, not that long since the Wright Brothers, airplanes have been developed in many ways and serve a myriad of functions. The books described in this review trace airplane development, through photographs and a descriptive narrative, from 1903 to the 1960s. They are at a middle school level but will be interesting to all ages. They have the physical form of picture books but are much more sophisticated than that in their content.
Only eleven years after Kitty Hawk, in 1914, airplanes had already become a new weapon of war in World War I. The Planes They Flew in World War I, by David C. Cooke, describes this development. In Bomber Planes that Made History and Fighter Planes that Made History, also by David C. Cooke, the author gives many examples of fighters and bombers, and not just American, from the years after World War I through World War II, and into the 1950s and early 1960s. Enthusiasts of historic military aircraft will really enjoy these two books.
Ever since the first flight in 1903, there has been a strong component of aviation that has strived for speed. And similarly to automobile racing, many new developments that were useful beyond racing were engineered because of this high-velocity quest. David Cooke’s book Racing Planes that Made History traces airplane racing through the early 1960s.
A big part of national intelligence gathering, before the extensive use of satellites, was spy planes. Once planes could go very high and very fast, they became useful in this important activity. Famous U.S. Spy Planes by George Sullivan fleshes out this lesser-known part of the history of intelligence with looks at many planes that have been used for spying over the years. Finally, the history of aviation is not just technical—bigger and better airplanes—but was made by intrepid pilots who pushed the limits of the technology available to them to show what new worlds the airplane could open. Flights that Made History, by David C. Cooke, shares the story of these amazing aviators and their airplanes.
If you ever get to visit the two Smithsonian Air and Space Museums, the one in downtown Washington DC and the other near Dulles Airport in Virginia, you will see many of the actual airplanes shown in the above books. They have been preserved because they are such an important part of aviation history. And for more than 70 years, the EAA Airventure Airshow in Oshkosh, WI, not all that far from Plumfield Library, also displays some of these airplane types. I have a good friend who faithfully attends this airshow, but I think that reading these books is easier than braving the 700,000+ attendance at this event!