front cover of Air Transport Labor Relations
Air Transport Labor Relations
Robert W. Kaps
Southern Illinois University Press, 1997

Robert W. Kaps examines air transport labor law in the United States as well as the underlying legislative and policy directives established by the federal government. The body of legislation governing labor relations in the private sector of the U.S. economy consists of two separate and distinct acts: the Railway Labor Act (RLA), which governs labor relations in the railroad and airline industries, and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which governs labor relations in all other industrial sectors.

Although the NLRA closely follows the pattern established by the RLA, Kaps notes that the two laws are distinguishable in several important areas. Labor contracts negotiated under the RLA continue in perpetuity, for example, whereas all other labor contracts expire at a specified date. Other important areas of difference relate to the collective bargaining process itself, the procedures for the arbitration of disputes and grievances, and the spheres of authority and jurisdiction to consider such matters as unfair labor practices.

Congress established a special labor law for railroad and airline workers for several reasons. Because of transportation’s critical importance to the economy, an essential goal of public policy has been to ensure that both passenger and freight transportation services continue without interruption. Production can cease—at least temporarily—in most other industries without causing significant harm to the economy. When transportation stops, however, production stops. Thus Congress saw fit to enact a statute that contained provisions to ensure that labor strife would not halt rail services. Primarily because of the importance of air mail transportation, the Railway Labor Act of 1926 was extended to the airline industry in 1936.

The first section of this book introduces labor policy and presents a history of the labor movement in the United States. Discussing early labor legislation, Kaps focuses on unfair labor practices and subsequent major labor statutes.

The second section provides readers with a comparison of labor provisions that apply to the railroad and airline industries as well as to the remainder of the economy.

The final section centers on the evolution of labor in the airline industry. The author pays particular attention to recent events affecting labor in commercial aviation, particularly the effect of airline deregulation on airline labor.

  
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Airborne Dreams
“Nisei” Stewardesses and Pan American World Airways
Christine R. Yano
Duke University Press, 2011
In 1955 Pan American World Airways began recruiting Japanese American women to work as stewardesses on its Tokyo-bound flights and eventually its round-the-world flights as well. Based in Honolulu, these women were informally known as Pan Am’s “Nisei”—second-generation Japanese Americans—even though not all of them were Japanese American or second-generation. They were ostensibly hired for their Japanese-language skills, but few spoke Japanese fluently. This absorbing account of Pan Am’s “Nisei” stewardess program suggests that the Japanese American (and later other Asian and Asian American) stewardesses were meant to enhance the airline’s image of exotic cosmopolitanism and worldliness. As its corporate archives demonstrate, Pan Am marketed itself as an iconic American company pioneering new frontiers of race, language, and culture. Christine R. Yano juxtaposes the airline’s strategies and practices with the recollections of former “Nisei” flight attendants. In interviews with the author, these women proudly recall their experiences as young women who left home to travel the globe with Pan American World Airways, forging their own cosmopolitan identities in the process. Airborne Dreams is the story of an unusual personnel program implemented by an American corporation intent on expanding and dominating the nascent market for international air travel. That program reflected the Jet Age dreams of global mobility that excited postwar Americans, as well as the inequalities of gender, class, race, and ethnicity that constrained many of them.
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Aircraft
David Pascoe
Reaktion Books, 2003
In his celebrated manifesto, "Aircraft" (1935), the architect Le Corbusier presented more than 100 photographs celebrating airplanes either in imperious flight or elegantly at rest. Dwelling on the artfully abstracted shapes of noses, wings, and tails, he declared : "Ponder a moment on the truth of these objects! Clearness of function!"

In Aircraft, David Pascoe follows this lead and offers a startling new account of the form of the airplane, an object that, in the course of a hundred years, has developed from a flimsy contraption of wood, wire and canvas into a machine compounded of exotic materials whose wings can touch the edges of space.

Tracing the airplane through the twentieth century, he considers the subject from a number of perspectives: as an inspiration for artists, architects and politicians; as a miracle of engineering; as a product of industrialized culture; as a device of military ambition; and, finally, in its clearness of function, as an instance of sublime technology.

Profusely illustrated and authoritatively written, Aircraft offers not just a fresh account of aeronautical design, documenting, in particular, the forms of earlier flying machines and the dependence of later projects upon them, but also provides a cultural history of an object whose very shape contains the dreams and nightmares of the modern age.
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The Airway to Everywhere
A History of All American Aviation, 1937–1953
W. David Lewis
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988
This book chronicles the history of All American Aviation of western Pennsylvania, a commercial airline pioneer. The brainchild of self-styled inventor Dr. Lytle S. Adams and Richard C. du Pont, the company began as an airmail delivery carrier, taking advantage of the Experimental Air Mail Act passed by Congress in 1938. The Airway to Everywhere relates the exciting early days of airmail delivery—hair-raising tales of courageous pilots who scooped mail bags tethered to wires strung between poles on makeshift airfields. The story of this airline is placed within the context a typical twentieth-century American business pattern-where technological innovation is followed by development and commercial application, followed by government subsidies and corporate takeovers. In that vein, All American Aviation would become Allegheny Airlines, and later, U.S. Air.
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The American Aviation Experience
A History
Edited by Tim Brady
Southern Illinois University Press, 2000

This book is designed to be a primary text for courses in aviation history and development and aviation in America.

The seventeen chapters in The American Aviation Experience: A History range chronologically from ancient times through the Wright brothers through both world wars, culminating with the development of the U.S. space program. Contributors also cover balloons and dirigibles, African American pioneers in aviation, and women in aviation. These essayists—leading scholars in the field—present the history of aviation mainly from an American perspective.

The American Aviation Experience includes 335 black-and-white photographs, two maps, and an appendix, “Leonardo da Vinci and the Science of Flight.”.

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Austin, Cleared for Takeoff
Aviators, Businessmen, and the Growth of an American City
By Kenneth B. Ragsdale
University of Texas Press, 2004

Austin, Texas, entered the aviation age on October 29, 1911, when Calbraith Perry Rodgers landed his Wright EX Flyer in a vacant field near the present-day intersection of Duval and 45th Streets. Some 3,000 excited people rushed out to see the pilot and his plane, much like the hundreds of thousands who mobbed Charles A. Lindbergh and The Spirit of St. Louis in Paris sixteen years later. Though no one that day in Austin could foresee all the changes that would result from manned flight, people here—as in cities and towns across the United States—realized that a new era was opening, and they greeted it with all-out enthusiasm.

This popularly written history tells the story of aviation in Austin from 1911 to the opening of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in 1999. Kenneth Ragsdale covers all the significant developments, beginning with military aviation activities during World War I and continuing through the barnstorming era of the 1920s, the inauguration of airmail service in 1928 and airline service in 1929, and the dedication of the first municipal airport in 1930. He also looks at the University of Texas's role in training pilots during World War II, the growth of commercial and military aviation in the postwar period, and the struggle over airport expansion that occupied the last decades of the twentieth century. Throughout, he shows how aviation and the city grew together and supported each other, which makes the Austin aviation experience a case study of the impact of aviation on urban communities nationwide.

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Bird Strike
The Crash of the Boston Electra
Michael N. Kalafatas
Brandeis University Press, 2010
On a warm and golden afternoon, October 4, 1960, a Lockheed Electra jet turboprop carrying 72 souls took off from Logan Airport. Seconds later, the plane slammed into a flock of 10,000 starlings, and abruptly plummeted into Winthrop Harbor. The collision took 62 lives and gave rise to the largest rescue mobilization in Boston’s history, which included civilians in addition to police, firefighters, skindivers, and Navy and Coast Guard air-sea rescue teams. Largely because of the quick action and good seamanship of Winthrop citizens, many of them boys in small boats, ten passengers survived what the Civil Aeronautics Board termed “a non-survivable crash.” Using firsthand interviews with survivors of the crash, rescuers, divers, aeronautics experts, and ornithologists, as well as a wide range of primary source material, Kalafatas foregrounds the story of the crash and its aftermath to anchor a broader inquiry into developments in the aeronautics industry, the increase in the number of big birds in the skies of North America, and the increasing danger of “bird strikes.” Along the way he looks into interesting historical sidelights such as the creation of Logan Airport, the transformation of Boston’s industrial base to new technologies, and the nature of journalistic investigations in the early 1960s. The book is a rare instance when an author can simultaneously write about a fascinating historical event and a clear and present danger today. Kalafatas calls for and itemizes solutions that protect both birds and the traveling public.
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Blackburn Buccaneer
Nico Braas
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
The Blackburn Buccaneer was the first jet aircraft specially designed for flying very low under the radar at high subsonic speeds. It was developed in the fifties and entered service at the Royal Navy in 1962. Later it also flew as an attack bomber at the R.A.F. and it even played a role in the Gulf War in 1991 before being retired in 1994 after an operational career that spanned three decades...
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Boeing B-47 Stratojet
the cold war jet bomber
Nico Braas
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
Built by Boeing, designated as B-47 and named the Stratojet, this plane was quantum leap in aircraft development. Initially Boeing entered the unknown when they started this project, but soon it would be evident that Strategic Air Command would have its multi-engine jet bomber with a speed performance similar to the latest jet fighters...
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Brewster Buffalo
Nico Braas
Amsterdam University Press

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Convair B-58 Hustler
cold war nuclear bomber
Nico Braas
Amsterdam University Press

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Corporate Aviation Management
Raoul Castro. Foreword by Torch Lewis
Southern Illinois University Press, 1995

In this comprehensive aviation manual, Raoul Castro provides a source of invaluable corporate aviation management information. He begins by giving an overview of corporate aviation from its inception, then focuses on the management principles and functions that specifically target corporate aviation. Through the utilization of these sound management principles, Castro facilitates the acceptance of corporate aircraft as indispensable tools of industry.

As Castro notes, few companies know how to use corporate aircraft to maximum advantage. Drawing on his expertise and experience, Castro designs a plan by which a company can achieve maximum utilization of an airplane or helicopter fleet. He gives specific instructions on how to facilitate the efficient use of the aviation department of a company, select appropriate aircraft, plan for disasters and establish security measures, fulfill legal requirements of the governmental agencies that regulate the use of aircraft, and manage the maintenance and repair of aircraft. Castro also discusses the scores of details involved in the management of a professional corporate aviation branch and how these details can be handled in a positive, productive manner.

After thoroughly examining the overall managerial functions involved in planning, organizing, controlling, and implementing an aviation arm, Castro concludes by discussing the future of corporate aviation.

This book is a practical and valuable guide for the executive in charge of an aviation department, an aviation department manager or chief pilot, aspirants to aviation management positions, and both students and teachers of aviation management.

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Dead Reckoning
Air Traffic Control, System Effects, and Risk
Diane Vaughan
University of Chicago Press, 2021
Vaughan unveils the complicated and high-pressure world of air traffic controllers as they navigate technology and political and public climates, and shows how they keep the skies so safe.

When two airplanes were flown into the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, Americans watched in uncomprehending shock as first responders struggled to react to the situation on the ground. Congruently, another remarkable and heroic feat was taking place in the air: more than six hundred and fifty air traffic control facilities across the country coordinated their efforts to ground four thousand flights in just two hours—an achievement all the more impressive considering the unprecedented nature of the task.

In Dead Reckoning, Diane Vaughan explores the complex work of air traffic controllers, work that is built upon a close relationship between human organizational systems and technology and is remarkably safe given the high level of risk. Vaughan observed the distinct skill sets of air traffic controllers and the ways their workplaces changed to adapt to technological developments and public and political pressures. She chronicles the ways these forces affected their jobs, from their relationships with one another and the layouts of their workspace to their understanding of their job and its place in society. The result is a nuanced and engaging look at an essential role that demands great coordination, collaboration, and focus—a role that technology will likely never be able to replace. Even as the book conveys warnings about complex systems and the liabilities of technological and organizational innovation, it shows the kinds of problem-solving solutions that evolved over time and the importance of people.
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Dick Cole’s War
Doolittle Raider, Hump Pilot, Air Commando
Dennis R. Okerstrom
University of Missouri Press, 2015
With the 100th anniversary of his birth on September 7, 2015 Dick Cole has long stood in the powerful spotlight of fame that has followed him since his B-25 was launched from a Navy carrier and flown toward Japan just four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In recognition the tremendous boost Doolittle’s Raid gave American morale, members of The Tokyo Doolittle Raiders were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in May 2014.



Doolittle’s Raid was only the opening act of Cole’s flying career during the war. When that mission was complete and all of the 16 aircraft had crash-landed in China, many of the survivors were assigned to combat units in Europe. Cole remained in India after their rescue and was assigned to Ferrying Command, flying the Hump of the Himalayas for a year in the world’s worst weather, with inadequate aircraft, few aids to navigation, and inaccurate maps. More than 600 aircraft with their crews were lost during this monumental effort to keep China in the war, but Cole survived and rotated home in 1943. He was home just a few months when he was recruited for the First Air Commandos and he returned to India to participate in Project 9, the aerial invasion of Burma.

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Dirigible Dreams
The Age of the Airship
C. Michael Hiam
University Press of New England, 2014
Here is the story of airships—manmade flying machines without wings—from their earliest beginnings to the modern era of blimps. In postcards and advertisements, the sleek, silver, cigar-shaped airships, or dirigibles, were the embodiment of futuristic visions of air travel. They immediately captivated the imaginations of people worldwide, but in less than fifty years dirigible became a byword for doomed futurism, an Icarian figure of industrial hubris. Dirigible Dreams looks back on this bygone era, when the future of exploration, commercial travel, and warfare largely involved the prospect of wingless flight. In Dirigible Dreams, C. Michael Hiam celebrates the legendary figures of this promising technology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—the pioneering aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, the doomed polar explorers S. A. Andrée and Walter Wellman, and the great Prussian inventor and promoter Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, among other pivotal figures—and recounts fascinating stories of exploration, transatlantic journeys, and floating armadas that rained death during World War I. While there were triumphs, such as the polar flight of the Norge, most of these tales are of disaster and woe, culminating in perhaps the most famous disaster of all time, the crash of the Hindenburg. This story of daring men and their flying machines, dreamers and adventurers who pushed modern technology to—and often beyond—its limitations, is an informative and exciting mix of history, technology, awe-inspiring exploits, and warfare that will captivate readers with its depiction of a lost golden age of air travel. Readable and authoritative, enlivened by colorful characters and nail-biting drama, Dirigible Dreams will appeal to a new generation of general readers and scholars interested in the origins of modern aviation.
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The Divided Skies
Establishing Segregated Flight Training at Tuskegee, Alabama, 1934-1942
Robert J. Jakeman
University of Alabama Press, 1996

In the Persian Gulf War, Americans of all races fought in integrated units under the leadership of the first African-American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Indeed, the United States armed forces of the 1990s are arguably the most integrated institution in American society. But it was not always so.

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Empire of the Air
Aviation and the American Ascendancy
Jenifer Van Vleck
Harvard University Press, 2013

From the flights of the Wright brothers through the mass journeys of the jet age, airplanes inspired Americans to reimagine their nation’s place within the world. Now, Jenifer Van Vleck reveals the central role commercial aviation played in the United States’ rise to global preeminence in the twentieth century. As U.S. military and economic influence grew, the federal government partnered with the aviation industry to carry and deliver American power across the globe and to sell the very idea of the “American Century” to the public at home and abroad.

Invented on American soil and widely viewed as a symbol of national greatness, the airplane promised to extend the frontiers of the United States “to infinity,” as Pan American World Airways president Juan Trippe said. As it accelerated the global circulation of U.S. capital, consumer goods, technologies, weapons, popular culture, and expertise, few places remained distant from the influence of Wall Street and Washington. Aviation promised to secure a new type of empire—an empire of the air instead of the land, which emphasized access to markets rather than the conquest of territory and made the entire world America’s sphere of influence.

By the late 1960s, however, foreign airlines and governments were challenging America’s control of global airways, and the domestic aviation industry hit turbulent times. Just as the history of commercial aviation helps to explain the ascendance of American power, its subsequent challenges reflect the limits and contradictions of the American Century.

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English Electric Canberra
Mick Gladwin
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
From 1949 to 2006 the English Electric Canberra has served in the frontline of the Royal Air Force around the world. The Canberra became the UK's first jet bomber, although that was not its only role, undertaking other tasks such as, pilot/navigator training, photographic reconnaissance, target-tag and electronic countermeasures duties to name a few. The story of the Canberra came to a close for the RAF on the 22nd June 2006 when the last remaining Canberra PR.9s retiring from service life after returning from operational duties. The author had the honour to serve with them in their twilight days of their careers.
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Fatal Words
Communication Clashes and Aircraft Crashes
Steven Cushing
University of Chicago Press, 1994
On March 27, 1977, 583 people died when KLM and Pan Am 747s collided on a crowded, foggy runway in Tenerife, the Canary Islands. The cause, a miscommunication between the pilot and the air traffic controller. The pilot radioed, "We are now at takeoff," meaning that the plane was lifting off, but the tower controller misunderstood and thought the plane was waiting on the runway.

In Fatal Words, Steven Cushing explains how miscommunication has led to dozens of aircraft disasters, and he proposes innovative solutions for preventing them. He examines ambiguities in language when aviation jargon and colloquial English are mixed, when a word is used that has different meanings, and when different words are used that sound alike. To remedy these problems, Cushing proposes a visual communication system and a computerized voice mechanism to help clear up confusing language.

Fatal Words is an accessible explanation of some of the most notorious aircraft tragedies of our time, and it will appeal to scholars in communications, linguistics, and cognitive science, to aviation experts, and to general readers.
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Fiat G.91
Arno Landewers
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
The Fiat G.91 was an Italian jet fighter aircraft. It was the winner of the NATO competition in 1953 for a light fighter as standard equipment for Allied air forces. It entered in operational service with the Italian Air Force in 1961, with the West German Luftwaffe in 1962, and later with the Portuguese Air Force. It was in production for nineteen years. 756 aircraft were completed, including the prototypes and pre-production models. The assembly lines were finally closed in 1977. The Fiat G.91 enjoyed a long service life that extended over 35 years. It was widely used by Portugal in the Portuguese Colonial War in Africa.
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Fiscal Aspects of Aviation Management
Robert W. Kaps
Southern Illinois University Press, 2000

Although introductions to courses in finance exist for a variety of fields, Robert W. Kaps provides the first text to address the subject from an aviation viewpoint. Relying on his vast experience—twenty-plus years in the airline industry and more than thirty years in aviation—Kaps seeks not only to prepare students for careers in the aviation field but also to evoke in these students an excitement about the business. Specifically, he shows students how airlines, airports, and aviation are financed. Each chapter contains examples and illustrations and ends with suggested readings and references.

Following his discussion of financial management and accounting procedures, Kaps turns to financial management and sources of financial information. Here he discusses types of business organizations, corporate goals, business ethics, maximizing share price, and sources of financial information.

Kaps also covers debt markets, financial statements, air transport sector revenue generation, and air transport operating cost management, including cost administration and labor costs, fuel, and landing fees and rentals. He describes in depth air transport yield management systems and airport financing, including revenues, ownership, operations, revenue generation, funding, allocation of Air Improvement Program funds, bonds, and passenger facility charges.

Kaps concludes with a discussion of the preparation of a business plan, which includes advice about starting and running a business. He also provides two typical business plan outlines. While the elements of fiscal management in aviation follow generally accepted accounting principles, many nuances are germane only to the airline industry. Kaps provides a basic understanding of the principles that are applicable throughout the airline industry.

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Fokker C.X
Edwin Hoogschagen
Amsterdam University Press

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From Torpedoes to Aviation
Washington Irving Chambers & Technological Innovation in the New Navy 1876 to 1913
Stephen K. Stein
University of Alabama Press, 2007

The central figure in the modernization of the U.S. Navy.

The career of Washington Irving Chambers spans a formative period in the development of the United States Navy: He entered the Naval Academy in the doldrum years of obsolete, often rotting ships, and left after he had helped like-minded officers convince Congress and the public of the need to adopt a new naval strategy built around a fleet of technologically advanced battleships. He also laid the groundwork for naval aviation and the important role it would play in the modern navy.

This work covers Chambers’s early naval career, his work at the new Office of Naval Intelligence, his participation in the Greeley Relief Expedition, and a survey for the projected isthmian canal through Nicaragua, before becoming the key advocate for naval modernization. As such, Chambers worked as a pioneering torpedo designer, supervised construction of the Maine, modernized the New York Navy Yard, and became a member of the first permanent faculty at the Naval War College.

During his long career, Chambers not only designed torpedoes, but also several warships, including a prototype Dreadnought-style battleship and a host of small devices that ranged from torpedo guidance systems to the first catapult for launching airplanes from ships. At the close of his career, Chambers purchased the navy’s first aircraft and founded its air arm. Working with Glenn Curtiss, Chambers guided a coalition of aviation enthusiasts and pioneers who popularized naval aviation and demonstrated its capabilities. Chambers arranged the first take-off and landing of an airplane from a ship and other demonstrations of naval aviation. Combined with his tireless advocacy for modernization, these contributions secured a place in naval and aviation history for the innovator.

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Grounded
Perpetual Flight . . . and Then the Pandemic
Christopher Schaberg
University of Minnesota Press, 2020

As commercial flight is changing dramatically and its future remains unclear, a look at how we got here

Grounded: Perpetual Flight . . . and Then the Pandemic considers the time leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing global plummet in commercial flight. Mobility studies scholar Christopher Schaberg tours the newly opened airport terminal outside of New Orleans (MSY) in late 2019, and goes on to survey the broad cultural landscape of empty airports and grounded planes in the early months of the novel coronavirus’s spread in 2020. The book culminates in a reflection on the future of air travel: what may unfold, and what parts of commercial flight are almost certainly relics of the past. Grounded blends journalistic reportage with cultural theory and philosophical inquiry in order to offer graspable insights as well as a stinging critique of contemporary air travel.

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Hawker Hunter
the story of a thoroughbred
Sreco Bradic
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
The most successful British jet fighter produced was without doubt the sleek and graceful Hawker Hunter. As usual for every new aircraft type it had its share of teething problems, but once these were all adequately solved the U.K. had at that time one of the best jet fighters available. It was built in large numbers and exported to many countries.
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Hero of the Angry Sky
The World War I Diary and Letters of David S. Ingalls, America’s First Naval Ace
David S. Ingalls
Ohio University Press, 2012

Hero of the Angry Sky draws on the unpublished diaries, correspondence, informal memoir, and other personal documents of the U.S. Navy’s only flying “ace” of World War I to tell his unique story. David S. Ingalls was a prolific writer, and virtually all of his World War I aviation career is covered, from the teenager’s early, informal training in Palm Beach, Florida, to his exhilarating and terrifying missions over the Western Front. This edited collection of Ingalls’s writing details the career of the U.S. Navy’s most successful combat flyer from that conflict.

While Ingalls’s wartime experiences are compelling at a personal level, they also illuminate the larger, but still relatively unexplored, realm of early U.S. naval aviation. Ingalls’s engaging correspondence offers a rare personal view of the evolution of naval aviation during the war, both at home and abroad. There are no published biographies of navy combat flyers from this period, and just a handful of diaries and letters in print, the last appearing more than twenty years ago. Ingalls’s extensive letters and diaries add significantly to historians’ store of available material.

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Hong Kong Takes Flight
Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Global Hub, 1930s–1998
John D. Wong
Harvard University Press, 2022
Commercial aviation took shape in Hong Kong as the city developed into a powerful economy. Rather than accepting air travel as an inevitability in the era of global mobility, John Wong argues that Hong Kong’s development into a regional and global airline hub was not preordained. By underscoring the shifting process through which this hub emerged, Hong Kong Takes Flight aims to describe globalization and global networks in the making. Viewing the globalization of the city through the prism of its airline industry, Wong examines how policymakers and businesses asserted themselves against international partners and competitors in a bid to accrue socioeconomic benefits, negotiated their interests in Hong Kong’s economic success, and articulated their expressions of modernity.
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The Imagined Empire
Balloon Enlightenments in Revolutionary Europe
Mi Gyung Kim
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016
The hot-air balloon, invented by the Montgolfier brothers in 1783, launched for the second time just days before the Treaty of Paris would end the American Revolutionary War. The ascent in Paris—a technological marvel witnessed by a diverse crowd that included Benjamin Franklin—highlighted celebrations of French military victory against Britain and ignited a balloon mania that swept across Europe at the end of the Enlightenment. This popular frenzy for balloon experiments, which attracted hundreds of thousands of spectators, fundamentally altered the once elite audience for science by bringing aristocrats and commoners together.
            The Imagined Empire explores how this material artifact, the flying machine, not only expanded the public for science and spectacle but also inspired utopian dreams of a republican monarchy that would obliterate social boundaries. The balloon, Mi Gyung Kim argues, was a people-machine, a cultural performance that unified and mobilized the people of France, who imagined an aerial empire that would bring glory to the French nation. This critical history of ballooning considers how a relatively simple mechanical gadget became an explosive cultural and political phenomenon on the eve of the French Revolution.
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The Jerrie Mock Story
The First Woman to Fly Solo around the World
Nancy Roe Pimm
Ohio University Press, 2016

A Junior Library Guild selection
Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Official 2016 Summer Reading List

In this biography for middle-grade readers, Nancy Roe Pimm tells the story of Geraldine “Jerrie” Mock, the first woman to fly solo around the world. In her trusty Cessna, The Spirit of Columbus—also known as Charlie—she traveled from Columbus, Ohio, on an eastward route that totaled nearly twenty-three thousand miles and took almost a month. Overcoming wind, ice, mechanical problems, and maybe even sabotage, Mock persevered.

Mock caught the aviation bug at seven years old, when she rode in a Ford Trimotor plane with her parents. In high school, she displayed a talent for math and science, and she was the only woman in her aeronautical engineering classes at Ohio State University. Although she then settled into domestic life, she never lost her interest in flying. What began as a joking suggestion from her husband to fly around the world prompted her to pursue her childhood dream. But the dream became a race, as another woman, Joan Merriam Smith, also sought to be the first to circle the globe.

Even though Mock beat Smith and accomplished what her heroine Amelia Earhart had died trying to do, her feat was overshadowed by the Vietnam War and other world events. Now, Pimm introduces Mock to a new generation of adventurers.

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Labor Relations in the Aviation and Aerospace Industries
Robert W. Kaps, J. Scott Hamilton, Timm J. Bliss
Southern Illinois University Press, 2012

In this textbook designed for courses on aviation labor relations, the authors-experts with many years of experience in these sectors-examine and evaluate the labor process for all aspects of the aviation and aerospace industries, including aerospace manufacturing, airlines, general aviation, federal and state administrative agencies, and public airports.

Divided into three parts-Public Policy and Labor Law; Principles, Practices and Procedures in Collective Bargaining and Dispute Resolution; and the Changing Labor Relations Environment-the book provides an overview of the industries and the development of US labor law and policy, then explores the statutory, regulatory, and case laws applicable to each industry segment before concluding with an examination of current and developing issues and trends. The authors present the evolution of aviation and aerospace labor laws, going as far back as the early nineteenth century to lay the historical foundation, and cover the development and main features of the principal statutes governing labor relations in the United States today, the Railway Labor Act, the National Labor Relations Act, and the Civil Service Reform Act. They also investigate the growth of the industries and their impact on labor relations, as well as the current issues and challenges facing management and labor in each segment of this dynamic, sometimes volatile, business and their implications for collective bargaining. Twenty case studies not only illuminate practical applications of such fundamental concepts as unfair labor practices and unions' duty of fair representation but also enliven the subject, preparing the reader to use the concepts in real-world decision making. 

A study guide with review questions, online assignments, supplemental readings, and exercises is available for students. For those teachers using the textbook in their courses, there is an instructor's manual with additional resources for developing courses in the classroom, online, or by blended learning, as well as a variety of assignments and materials to enhance and vary the mock negotiation exercise. 

A revision and expansion of Robert W. Kaps's Air Transport Labor Relations, this outstanding new volume provides students and teachers with valuable information and perspectives on industries that are highly dependent on technologically skilled labor. Labor Relations in the Aviation and Aerospace Industries offers a sweeping and thorough treatment of labor relations, public policy, law, and practice and is the definitive work on the labor process in the aviation and aerospace sectors.
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Labor Relations in the Aviation and Aerospace Industries
Study Guide
Robert W. Kaps, J. Scott Hamilton, Timm J. Bliss
Southern Illinois University Press, 2012

This Study Guide is designed to be used with the textbook Labor Relations in the Aviation and Aerospace Industries.  It is intended to assist students in comprehending basic terminology and principles of labor relations and the law, to relate those principles to unique features of the aviation and aerospace industry, and to prepare for the kinds of labor relations–related decisions students will soon be making as aviation professionals, whether in private or public sector employment. It includes review questions, online assignments, supplemental readings, and exercises.

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Landing in Las Vegas
Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Tourist City
Daniel K. Bubb
University of Nevada Press, 2017

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Las Vegas was a dusty, isolated desert town. By century’s end, it was the country’s fastest-growing city, a world-class travel destination with a lucrative tourist industry hosting millions of visitors a year. This transformation came about in large part because of a symbiotic relationship between airlines, the city, and the airport, facilitated by the economic democratization and deregulation of the airline industry, the development of faster and more comfortable aircraft, and the ambitious vision of Las Vegas city leaders and casino owners. Landing in Las Vegas is a compelling study of the role of fast, affordable transportation in overcoming the vast distances of the American West and binding western urban centers to the national and international tourism, business, and entertainment industries.

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Locomotive to Aeromotive
Octave Chanute and the Transportation Revolution
Simine Short. Foreword by Tom D. Crouch
University of Illinois Press, 2014
French-born and self-trained civil engineer Octave Chanute designed America's two largest stockyards, created innovative and influential structures such as the Kansas City Bridge over the previously "unbridgeable" Missouri River, and was a passionate aviation pioneer whose collaborative approach to aeronautical engineering problems encouraged other experimenters, including the Wright brothers. Drawing on rich archival material and exclusive family sources, Locomotive to Aeromotive is the first detailed examination of Chanute's life and his immeasurable contributions to engineering and transportation, from the ground transportation revolution of the mid-nineteenth century to the early days of aviation.

Aviation researcher and historian Simine Short brings to light in colorful detail many previously overlooked facets of Chanute's professional and personal life. In the late nineteenth century, few considered engineering as a profession on par with law or medicine, but Chanute devoted much time and energy to the newly established professional societies that were created to set standards and serve the needs of civil engineers. Though best known for his aviation work, he became a key figure in the opening of the American continent by laying railroad tracks and building bridges, experiences that later gave him the engineering knowledge to build the first stable aircraft structure. Chanute also introduced a procedure to treat wooden railroad ties with an antiseptic that increased the wood’s lifespan in the tracks. Establishing the first commercial plants, he convinced railroad men that it was commercially feasible to make money by spending money on treating ties to conserve natural resources. He next introduced the date nail to help track the age and longevity of railroad ties.

A versatile engineer, Chanute was known as a kind and generous colleague during his career. Using correspondence and other materials not previously available to scholars and biographers, Short covers Chanute's formative years in antebellum America as well as his experiences traveling from New Orleans to New York, his apprenticeship on the Hudson River Railroad, and his early engineering successes. His multiple contributions to railway expansion, bridge building, and wood preservation established his reputation as one of the nation's most successful and distinguished civil engineers. Instead of retiring, he utilized his experiences and knowledge as a bridge builder in the development of motorless flight. Through the reflections of other engineers, scientists, and pioneers in various fields who knew him, Short characterizes Chanute as a man who believed in fostering and supporting people who were willing to learn. This well-researched biography cements Chanute's place as a preeminent engineer and mentor in the history of transportation in the United States and the development of the airplane.

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The Many Lives of Eddie Rickenbacker
Andrew Speno
Ohio University Press, 2020

The life story of a daredevil who became a war hero will fascinate adventurous young readers with its tales of survival.

At age thirteen, following the death of his father, young Eddie dropped out of school and joined the workforce. Through a combination of smarts, hard work, and perseverance, Rickenbacker would grow up to become an automobile mechanic, a race car driver, a fighter pilot, an entrepreneur, a war hero, a business executive, and a staunch advocate for hard work and personal responsibility.

Along the way he lived on the line between recklessness and courage. He survived dozens of accidents, coming close to death more than once. During the earliest years of American automobile racing, Rickenbacker was “the most daring and withal the most cautious driver” on the circuit. How could he have been both daring and cautious? This book invites young readers to decide for themselves as they follow Rickenbacker on his many hair-raising adventures.

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Martin Mariner
Nico Braas
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
In 1937 The Glen Martin company started with the design of the model I62. This was a design for a twin engine high-wing monoplane flying boat with an inverted gull wing. As power plant one of the most powerful air-cooled radial engines then available was selected: the Wright R-200-6 Cyclone of 1600 hp maximum take-off power.
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Mayday! Mayday!
Aircraft Crashes In The Great Smoky Mtn Nat Park, 1920-
Jeff Wadley
University of Tennessee Press, 2002
Mayday! Mayday!
Aircraft Crashes in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 1920–2000
Jeff Wadley and Dwight McCarter
Since the dawn of aviation, more than fifty aircraft have crashed in the Great Smoky Mountains. This book details all of those known incidents from 1920 to 2000, including those that occurred within the area before the establishment of the National Park in 1934. Jeff Wadley and Dwight McCarter, who have been involved in search-and-rescue missions in the Smokies for decades, have researched official documents and newspaper archives and conducted extensive interviews with survivors, family members, and eyewitnesses to record not only tragedies but also triumphs of survival.
The authors tell how the earliest known plane crashes in the Smokies were of the single-engine Curtis "Jenny" biplanes flown by young air aces during the World War I era. In the years since, the Smokies have claimed private planes, military jets, helicopters, and even a hot air balloon. These disasters arose from numerous causes—from fuel depletion and icing to "dare-deviling" or simply flying too low. Wadley and McCarter attest to the difficult duties of search-and-rescue teams in the most remote areas of the park. Of 127 persons involved in crashes, only 56 survived. Readers will be touched by these accounts—such as that of two small children who survived a December 1977 crash that killed their father and older sister.
Mayday! Mayday! offers both cautionary tales for pilots who fly above these ridges and seasoned advice to those who search for victims. The Smokies have been called by some another Bermuda Triangle; this book explains why and reminds us that no skies are entirely friendly.
The Authors: Jeff Wadley is a lieutenant colonel in the Tennessee Civil Air Patrol who serves as a mission coordinator and trainer in the Smokies.
Dwight McCarter served as a backcountry ranger in the park for over twenty years and is the author of Lost! A Ranger's Journal of Search and Rescue in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.


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Mexican Icarus
Aviation and the Modernization of Mexican Identity, 1928-1960
Peter B. Soland
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023
The development of aviation in Mexico reflected more than a pragmatic response to the material challenges brought on by the 1910 Revolution. It was also an effective symbol for promoting the aspirations of the new elite who attained prominence during the war and who fixated on technology as a measure of national progress. The politicians, industrialists, and cultural influencers in the media who made up this group molded the aviator into an avatar of modern citizenship. The figure of the pilot as a model citizen proved an adept vessel for disseminating the values championed by the official party of the Revolution and validating the technological determinism that underpinned its philosophy of development. At the same time, the archetype of the aviator camouflaged problematic aspects of the government’s unification and development plans that displaced and exploited poor and Indigenous communities. 
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Mitchell Masterpieces 3
An Illustrated History of B-25 Warbirds in Business
Wim Nijenhuis
Amsterdam University Press

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Naked Airport
A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure
Alastair Gordon
University of Chicago Press, 2008
 
Although airports are now best known for interminable waits at check-in counters, liquid restrictions for carry-on luggage, and humiliating shoe-removal rituals at security, they were once the backdrops for jet-setters who strutted, martinis in hand, through curvilinear terminals designed by Eero Saarinen. In the critically acclaimed Naked Airport, Alastair Gordon traces the cultural history of this defining institution from its origins in the muddy fields of flying machines to its frontline position in the struggle against international terrorism.
            From global politics to action movies to the daily commute, Gordon shows how the airport has changed our sense of time, distance, and style, and ultimately the way cities are built and business is done. He introduces the people who shaped and were shaped by this place of sudden transition: pilots like Charles Lindbergh, architects like Le Corbusier, and political figures like Fiorello LaGuardia and Adolf Hitler. Naked Airport is a profoundly original history of a long-neglected yet central component of modern life.
 
“This charming history documents why airports have always been such intriguing places. Gordon wittily deconstructs air terminal architecture. . . . Here is a book with more than enough quirky details to last a long layover.”—People
 
“[A] splendid cultural history.”—Atlantic Monthly
 
“Gordon, an architecture and design critic, tells his story well, bringing to life some of the main characters and highlighting some of the important issues concerning urbanism and airports.”—Michael Roth, San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Gordon provides a truly compelling account of how airports had over the course of three-quarters of a century become the locus of not only modern dreams but postmodern nightmares as well. Don’t leave home without it.”—Terence Riley, director of the Miami Art Museum
 

 
 
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The Naval Air War in Korea
Richard P. Hallion
University of Alabama Press, 2011

“In The Naval Air War in Korea, Dr. Hallion has captured the fact, feel- ing, and fancy of a very important conflict in aviation history, in- cluding the highly significant facets of the transition from piston to jet-propelled combat aircraft.”—Norman Polmar, author of Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet, 18th Edition

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Noel Wien
Alaska Pioneer Bush Pilot
Ira Harkey
University of Alaska Press, 1999
From his days as one of Alaska's earliest bush pilots through the years spent developing Wien Air Alaska with his brothers, Noel Wien built up a long list of firsts: he was first to fly commercially from Fairbanks to Nome and from Fairbanks to Seattle, first to fly from Anchorage to Fairbanks, first to fly and land beyond the Arctic Circle, and first to make a round-trip flight between Alaska and Asia.
 
Wien shared a vision to bring commercial aviation to the Far North, and he acted on it.  He had 538 hours of barnstorming and aerial circus stunt flying behind him when he arrived in Alaska in 1924.  At that time, Alaska's rugged terrain permitted little more than primitive means of communication and transportation.  There were no air charts and no radio communication.  Navigation depended solely on a pilot's use of natural features of checkpoints, but the innumerable rivers and mountains too easily could look identical.  Safe landing sites were scarce.  Wien embraced the challenge presented by these obstacles with courage tempered by his native caution - not to mention exceptional talent and a boundless love of flying.  Before long, supplies could be taken to settlements previously serviced only by dog sled and sick persons could be transported quickly to hospitals.
 
In this dramatic account of a flying hero, Pulitzer Prize winning author Ira Harkey describes Wien's experiences in an engaging style, and he establishes Wien's place in Alaska history.  In the process, Harkey makes a valuable contribution towards an understanding of the Alaska of the recent past and the people who lived there.
 
This commemorative edition marks the 75th anniversary of Noel Wien's arrival in Alaska as well as his pioneering flight between Anchorage and Fairbanks.  It includes additional photographs and an informative new foreword by Cole.
 
Noel Wien pursued his vision through decades of wild experiences in an unyielding land.  His aviation milestones brought the people of Alaska closer and helped open Alaska to the outside world.
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On the Wing
American Poems of Air and Space Flight
Olsen, Karen Yelena
University of Iowa Press, 2005
From Kitty Hawk to the jumbo jet and from the lunar landing to interstellar probes, American poets in On the Wing explore the phenomena of aviation and space flight. Edited by Karen Yelena Olsen, this balanced yet buoyant anthology collects 116 poems. The six thematic sections celebrate past achievements and the sensuous joys of flying (“Impulse of Delight”), revel in the vistas opening to the airborne traveler (“Worlds Above, Below, Within”), ponder the impact of air travel on everyday life (“Airplane Visions, Airport Truths”), outline the sinister role of the airplane in war (“Angle of Attack”), lament the shadow of airborne tragedy (“Icarus Falling”), and explore the mythic dimensions of space flight (“Space Odysseys”).
Olsen’s introduction traces the prehistory of flight literature from the Bible to the 19th century and sketches the evolution of 20th-century response, from initial exuberance to a more nuanced and probing examination of aviation and aerospace as they affect our lives. The book includes a short history of flight in the U.S. The product of a lifetime’s passion for both flight and poetry, this collection will deeply interest those who have never been on a plane—and delight those who have.
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Prairie Sky
A Pilot's Reflections on Flying and the Grace of Altitude
W. Scott Olsen
University of Missouri Press, 2013

“It’s almost like ballet. Preflight. Starting. Warm-up. The voices from the control tower—the instructions. Taxiing. The rush down the runway. Airborne. There are names for every move. The run-up. Position and hold. Every move needs to be learned, practiced, made so familiar you feel the patterns in every other thing you do. It’s technical, yes. But there is a grace to getting metal and bone into the sky.”

Prairie Sky is a celebration of curiosity and a book for explorers. In this collection of contemplative essays, Scott Olsen invites readers to view the world from a pilot’s seat, demonstrating how, with just a little bit of altitude, the world changes, new relationships become visible, and new questions seem to rise up from the ground.

Whether searching for the still-evident shores of ancient lakes, the dustbowl-era shelterbelt supposed to run the length of the country, or the even more elusive understandings of physics and theology, Olsen shares the unique perspective and insight allowed to pilots.

Prairie Sky explores the reality as well as the metaphor of flight: notions of ceaseless time and boundless space, personal interior and exterior vision, social history, meteorology, and geology. Olsen takes readers along as he chases a new way of looking at the physical world and wonders aloud about how the whole planet moves in interconnected ways not visible from the ground. While the northern prairie may call to mind images of golden harvests and summer twilight such images do not define the region. The land bears marks left by gut-shaking thunderstorms, hard-frozen rivers, sweeping floods, and hurricane-size storms. Olsen takes to the midwestern sky to confront the ordinary world and reveals the magic--the wondrous and unique sights visible from the pilot’s seat of a Cessna.

Like Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic work Wind, Sand and Stars, Olsen’s Prairie Sky reveals the heart of what it means to fly. In the grand romantic tradition of the travel essay, it opens the dramatic paradoxes of self and collective, linear and circular, the heart and the border.

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Sailor Of The Air
The 1917-1919 Letters and Diary of USN CMM/A Irving Edward Sheely
Lawrence D. Sheely
University of Alabama Press, 1993

In the winter of 1917, with most of the world at war, twenty-three-year-old Irving Edward Sheely of Albany, New York, enlisted in Naval Aviation and began his training at Pensacola Naval Air Station. When Congress declared ware on Germany on April 6, 1917, the combined strength of aviation within the Navy and Marine Corps was 48 officers, 239 enlisted men, 54 airplanes, one airship, and one air station.

Lieutenant Kenneth Whiting immediately recruited seven volunteer officers and 122 volunteer enlisted men with orders to go directly to France as the First Aeronautical Detachment. By June, the first organized contingent of American forces arrived in the combat zone at St. Nazaire, France—woefully unprepared to take on the mighty submarine force of Imperial Germany. Among this small detachment was Landsman Machinist Mate Second Class Irving E. Sheely.
Trained by American and foreign officers, using both American and foreign aircraft, Sheely learned aviation and aviation combat at the heart of the action. He served as Observer/Gunlayer with Navy Lieutenant Kenneth MacLeish as pilot, and the two participated in some of the first antisubmarine air patrols in history, including a sea landing to rescue a downed crew. While at Clermont-Ferrand, Sheely developed an improved bombsight, for which he was praised by MacLeish. Following the Armistice, Sheely participated in the closing of the Navy base at Eastleigh, England, and returned to the United States in November 1918.
Utilizing Sheely’s correspondence and meticulous diary spanning 19 months of training and service—mostly on foreign soil and in foreign aircraft—this book presents an unusual first person account of the wartime experience of naval aviation in World War I. Sheely’s letters and diary describe the many deprivations and inadequacies of the aviation program and show clearly the sacrifices made by the officers and enlisted men. He supplied for himself items, such as helmet and goggles, that later servicemen would expect the military to issue. In addition to wartime description, the letters reveal the young man’s concern for his family and his interest in home, so a very human story emerges.
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Sopwith Triplane
Nico Braas
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
The Sopwith Triplane was a British single seat fighter aircraft designed and manufactured by the Sopwith Aviation Company during the First World War. It has the distinction of being the first military triplane to see operational service.
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Warplane 04
Brewster Buffalo
Nico Braas
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
One of the lesser-known fighter aircraft of World War II was the Brewster Buffalo, or, using the U.S. Navy designation system, the F2A. By some historians the Buffalo is regarded as an outright failure, but this is a rating this stubby little fighter did not deserve. This book presents an overview of the development and operational use of the Buffalo with many photos including a number not published before.
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Warplane 05
Fokker C.X
Edwin Hoogschagen
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
Designed in 1933, the elegant looking Fokker C.X was outdated from the start. The type was intended as strategic reconnaissance plane but was not suited for this task. More modern, twin-engine types had claimed this specialized role. Instead, the biplane served well as short range scout and light bomber. The C.X is a little-known member of the Dutch Fokker stable. Just like the D.XXI this biplane served in the air forces of two little neutral countries on the eve of World War II. Both fought gallantly in a war of David versus Goliath proportions, and the complete operational history of the type spans a total of 25 years. In retrospect, the C.X was the last fighting biplane type built by Fokker and the company's last pre-war military type to survive.
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Warplane 06
Convair B-58 Hustler
Nico Braas
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
When the B-58 Hustler bomber entered service in 1958 it was a very futuristic looking delta wing bomber, creating a lot of sensation. Intended as a successor of the B-47 Stratojet it could reach twice the speed of sound. However, problems occurred during the development process and costs risings went so out of control that the whole project was almost cancelled a few times. Strategic Air Command was initially against ordering the B-58 for service, not only because of its complexity but also since they saw no advantage of a Mach 2 bomber over other types. Despite this the B-58 entered service at S.A.C. in 1960. It would have a relatively short operational career.
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Warplane 07
Weis WM.21 Sólyom
Edwin Hoogschagen
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
When Hungary got involved in World War II, the WM-21 Sólyom (Falcon) was the only Hungarian designed and manufactured plane in service with the Hungarian Royal Airforce. It was in widespread service as reconnaissance plane starting from 1938 onwards. In June of 1941, the machines failed to make an impression, mainly because of accidents and technical issues. The planes were diverted to the training role and were still used as such by May 1945. The Sólyom story starts in 1927, with the Fokker C.V, of which the Hungarian Royal Airforce had acquired 76, mostly built under license by Manfred Weiss (WM). WM improved the C.V, which resulted in the WM-16, with 18 built in two variants. This WM-16 paved the way for the WM-21, of which 128 examples were built.
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Warplane Plus 01
A17 - The Complete History of the Northrop Attack Planes and Its Export Derivatives
Santiago Rivas
Amsterdam University Press

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We Are the Union
Democratic Unionism and Dissent at Boeing
Dana L. Cloud
University of Illinois Press, 2011
In this extraordinary tale of union democracy, Dana L. Cloud engages union reformers at Boeing in Wichita and Seattle to reveal how ordinary workers attempted to take command of their futures by chipping away at the cozy partnership between union leadership and corporate management. Taking readers into the central dilemma of having to fight an institution while simultaneously using it as a bastion of basic self-defense, We Are the Union offers a sophisticated exploration of the structural opportunities and balance of forces at play in modern unions told through a highly relevant case study.
 
Focusing on the 1995 strike at Boeing, Cloud renders a multi-layered account of the battles between company and the union and within the union led by Unionists for Democratic Change and two other dissident groups. She gives voice to the company's claims of the hardships of competitiveness and the entrenched union leaders' calls for concessions in the name of job security, alongside the democratic union reformers' fight for a rank-and-file upsurge against both the company and the union leaders.

We
Are the Union is grounded in on-site research and interviews and focuses on the efforts by Unionists for Democratic Change to reform unions from within. Incorporating theory and methods from the fields of organizational communication as well as labor studies, Cloud methodically uncovers and analyzes the goals, strategies, and dilemmas of the dissidents who, while wanting to uphold the ideas and ideals of the union, took up the gauntlet to make it more responsive to workers and less conciliatory toward management, especially in times of economic stress or crisis. Cloud calls for a revival of militant unionism as a response to union leaders' embracing of management and training programs that put workers in the same camp as management, arguing that reform groups should look to the emergence of powerful industrial unions in the United States for guidance on revolutionizing existing institutions and building new ones that truly accommodate workers' needs.
 
Drawing from communication studies, labor history, and oral history and including a chapter co-written with Boeing worker Keith Thomas, We Are the Union contextualizes what happened at Boeing as an exemplar of agency that speaks both to the past and the future.
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Weis WM.21 Sólyom
Edwin Hoogschagen
Amsterdam University Press

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Wings for the Rising Sun
A Transnational History of Japanese Aviation
Jürgen P. Melzer
Harvard University Press, 2020

The history of Japanese aviation offers countless stories of heroic achievements and dismal failures, passionate enthusiasm and sheer terror, brilliant ideas and fatally flawed strategies.

In Wings for the Rising Sun, scholar and former airline pilot Jürgen Melzer connects the intense drama of flight with a global history of international cooperation, competition, and conflict. He details how Japanese strategists, diplomats, and industrialists skillfully exploited a series of major geopolitical changes to expand Japanese airpower and develop a domestic aviation industry. At the same time, the military and media orchestrated air shows, transcontinental goodwill flights, and press campaigns to stir popular interest in the national aviation project. Melzer analyzes the French, British, German, and American influence on Japan’s aviation, revealing in unprecedented detail how Japanese aeronautical experts absorbed foreign technologies at breathtaking speed. Yet they also designed and built boldly original flying machines that, in many respects, surpassed those of their mentors.

Wings for the Rising Sun compellingly links Japan’s aeronautical advancement with public mobilization, international relations, and the transnational flow of people and ideas, offering a fresh perspective on modern Japanese history.

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Wings of Gold
An Account of Naval Aviation Training in World War II, The Correspondence of Aviation Cadet/Ensign Robert R. Rea
Wesley Phillips Newton
University of Alabama Press, 1987
Wings of Gold makes a unique contribution to the history of naval aviation. The book sets out the day-to-day experiences and reactions of a cadet who went through the aviation training program at its peak during World War II. An emphasis on training is missing in almost all books dealing with that conflict; in this book, it is the focus. In contrast with official histories, this is an account of how training did occur, rather than how it was intended to occur. It chronicles failures as well as successes, frustrations and achievements. Beginning with a comprehensive introduction to the history of naval aviation training, the authors recount the personal experiences of an individual cadet preparing for war, based on wartime letters written by cadet Rea to his family. The letters are open and candid, and they provide an insider’s look at the conditions and nature of the Naval Aviation Training Program in the 1940s.
 
Millions of Americans underwent military training during World War II, and contemporary historians and readers have begun to recognize the significance and value of primary sources related not only to combat but also to training and preparedness.
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The Wright Company
From Invention to Industry
Edward J. Roach
Ohio University Press, 2014

Fresh from successful flights before royalty in Europe, and soon after thrilling hundreds of thousands of people by flying around the Statue of Liberty, in the fall of 1909 Wilbur and Orville Wright decided the time was right to begin manufacturing their airplanes for sale. Backed by Wall Street tycoons, including August Belmont, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and Andrew Freedman, the brothers formed the Wright Company. The Wright Company trained hundreds of early aviators at its flight schools, including Roy Brown, the Canadian pilot credited with shooting down Manfred von Richtofen—the “Red Baron”—during the First World War; and Hap Arnold, the commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces during the Second World War. Pilots with the company’s exhibition department thrilled crowds at events from Winnipeg to Boston, Corpus Christi to Colorado Springs. Cal Rodgers flew a Wright Company airplane in pursuit of the $50,000 Hearst Aviation Prize in 1911.

But all was not well in Dayton, a city that hummed with industry, producing cash registers, railroad cars, and many other products. The brothers found it hard to transition from running their own bicycle business to being corporate executives responsible for other people’s money. Their dogged pursuit of enforcement of their 1906 patent—especially against Glenn Curtiss and his company—helped hold back the development of the U.S. aviation industry. When Orville Wright sold the company in 1915, more than three years after his brother’s death, he was a comfortable man—but his company had built only 120 airplanes at its Dayton factory and Wright Company products were not in the U.S. arsenal as war continued in Europe.

Edward Roach provides a fascinating window into the legendary Wright Company, its place in Dayton, its management struggles, and its effects on early U.S. aviation.

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The Wright Company
From Invention to Industry
Edward J. Roach
Ohio University Press
Fresh from successful flights before royalty in Europe, and soon after thrilling hundreds of thousands of people by flying around the Statue of Liberty, in the fall of 1909 Wilbur and Orville Wright decided the time was right to begin manufacturing their airplanes for sale. Backed by Wall Street tycoons, including August Belmont, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and Andrew Freedman, the brothers formed the Wright Company. The Wright Company trained hundreds of early aviators at its flight schools, including Roy Brown, the Canadian pilot credited with shooting down Manfred von Richtofen — the “Red Baron”— during the First World War; and Hap Arnold, the commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces during the Second World War. Pilots with the company’s exhibition department thrilled crowds at events from Winnipeg to Boston, Corpus Christi to Colorado Springs. Cal Rodgers flew a Wright Company airplane in pursuit of the $50,000 Hearst Aviation Prize in 1911.

But all was not well in Dayton, a city that hummed with industry, producing cash registers, railroad cars, and many other products. The brothers found it hard to transition from running their own bicycle business to being corporate executives responsible for other people’s money. Their dogged pursuit of enforcement of their 1906 patent — especially against Glenn Curtiss and his company — helped hold back the development of the U.S. aviation industry. When Orville Wright sold the company in 1915, more than three years after his brother’s death, he was a comfortable man — but his company had built only 120 airplanes at its Dayton factory and Wright Company products were not in the U.S. arsenal as war continued in Europe.

Edward Roach provides a fascinating window into the legendary Wright Company, its place in Dayton, its management struggles, and its effects on early U.S. aviation.
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The Zeppelin Reader
Stories, Poems, and Songs from the Age Of Airships
Robert Hedin
University of Iowa Press, 1998

Size is usually the first thing that comes to mind when we ponder the great airships. In war and peace, to most people they seem bigger than life itself, bright, wondrous, sometimes dangerous apparitions that engender a religious awe. They remain the largest crafts that have ever been launched into the sky. Tracing the history of the airship from its beginning in the nineteenth century to its fiery conclusion in 1937, Robert Hedin has gathered the finest stories, descriptions, poems, music, and illustrations about what the era was like in fact and in spirit.

Included are vivid accounts by such legendary figures as Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, Hugo Eckener, and Alberto Santos-Dumont as well as memoirs, logs, journals, and diaries by Zeppelin commanders, crew, explorers, journalists, and survivors of ill-fated flights. The great airships inspired poets and writers old and new; here are works by such diverse writers as Robinson Jeffers, Kay Boyle, Bernard Shaw, D. H. Lawrence, Rita Dove, Richard Brautigan, and many others. There is a rich sampling of airship musical scores and lyrics; the music constitutes a kind of recovered history and helps recapture the emotional range of the era. Rounding out the gathering, The Zeppelin Reader is illustrated with stunning photographs, advertisements, drawings, and cartoons from the glorious age of airships.

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