Historic Naval Aircraft: From the Pages of Naval History Magazine

From the pages of Naval History Magazine comes Norman Polmar's Historic Naval Aircraft: The Best Of "Naval History" Magazine, providing readers with a close look at over thirty key U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aircraft drawn from the 'Historic Aircraft' column in Naval History magazine. Famous crafts appear along with nearly unknown ones to display fighters, bombers, trainers and more, with black and white photos accompany rich history on each aircraft type. A 'must' for the in-depth military, aviation or specialty naval library.

This book covers 30 aircraft that the U.S. Navy and Marines have used nad the 31st if you include the Spruce Goose, which was funded in part by the Navy. Some of the aircraft covered like the carrier version of the P-80 Shooting Star were kind of unexpected. Of course the old standbys of World War II are included: Wildcat, Corsair, Dauntless, Avenger. Strangely missing is the Hellcat, but this is a minor thing. Some of the unepected aircraft include the PB4Y Privateer, the Navy's version of the B-24. Another is the Martin P6M Seamaster, the jet powered flying boat that worked quite well but got cancelled to provide money for the Polaris sub project. Another is the Pitcairn OP-1, the first rotary-wing aircraft used by the Navy. It wasn't a helecopter but an Autogyro. This is the first time that I've lot of this information. Along with the descriptions of the planes, there is quite a bit of well researched information about each plane. This might include the various versions that were put into production, comments from a pilot, some of the history of the plane or other tidbits of information. The book is based on the column - Historic Aircraft - that appeared in the U.S. Naval Institute's magazine "Naval History" from 1997 to 2002.