“A Handbook of Fighter Aircraft”, by Francis Crosby

 

256 pages, Hermes House, ISBN-13: 978-1843094449

A Handbook of Fighter Aircraft was written by Francis Crosby, a staffer at by Britain’s Imperial War Museum, and is what it is: an illustrated guide to over 170 of history’s most significant fighters, complete with their evolution and the historical background to the rise of fighter aircraft and their impact on warfare. Just so as were on the right page here, this is more than just a glorified picture book filled with jets that make things go BOOM!, but a serious history of one of warfare’s most lethal weapons. Thus, to begin with, Crosby gives us several short chapters that cover a range of subjects, such as the birth of modern fighters, fighter aircraft technology up to 1945, fighter armament over the course of both World Wars, the Battle of Britain, night fighters, fighters at war throughout the Cold War, and so on. Moving on, the book is divided into two broad sections: “A-Z of World War Fighter Aircraft, 1914-45” and “A-Z of Modern Fighter Aircraft, 1945 to the Present Day” (that would be 2002, when my edition was published).

And so, for the first half covering the years 1914-45, we have entries on over ninety aircraft, including: the Albatros D.V fighters; the Bristol Bulldog; the Boeing P-12/F4B; the Boeing P-26 Peashooter; the Avia B-534; the Bristol Blenheim; the Dornier Do 17 Fliegender Bleistift; the Curtiss P-36 Hawk; the Bristol Type 156 Beaufighter; the Brewster F2A Buffalo; the Westland Whirlwind; the Bell P-39 Airacobra; the Mitsubishi Ki-46; the Petlyakov Pe-3; the Heinkel He 219 Uhu; the Gloster Meteor jet; and many, many more, besides. For the second half covering the years 1945 to 2002, we have entries on over 80 aircraft, including: the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15; the North American F-86 Sabre; the Hawker Sea Hawk; the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19; the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger; the Douglas F4D Skyray; the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter; the HAL HF-24 Marut; the Tupolev Tu-28; the Hawker Siddeley Harrier; the Grumman F-14 Tomcat; the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle; the Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard; the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon; the Mikoyan MiG-29; the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet; and this is just a small taste.

Depending on the aircraft, it might rate a one-or-two-page spread with text and several black-and-white and/or color photographs. Although fighter fans will enjoy the hundreds of pictures of Fokkers, Supermarines, Voughts, Lockheeds, Mitsubishis, Yakovlevs and Messerschmitts, I am not convinced that the double-decker A-to-Z format was the best way to organize such a diverse collection of aircraft, seeing as it does precious little to show the evolution of these fighters from one year or era to the next. For instance, jumping from the Gloster Javelin (introduced in 1956) to the Grumman F7F Tigercat (introduced in 1944) to the Grumman F9F Cougar (introduced in 1952) certainly supplies you with info on each individual aircraft, but it does nothing to illustrate the development of one aircraft to the next; having a strictly chronological arrangement would have, in my oh-so-humble opinion, produced a more useful history of the subject…anyhoo, with the organization criticism aside, A Handbook of Fighter Aircraft is still a comprehensive, well-illustrated guide to some of the greatest warplanes in history…up to 2002, at any rate.