During the five years of the Second World War, the power of engines and speed of aircraft increased as much as it did during twenty years of peacetime. Conventional aircraft and engines reached the limits marked in the original design and surpassed them, very fast. The basis for this huge achievement was exotic fuels, short-lived artificially overpowered engines, propellers with four, five, and even six blades, and thinner wings with special sections of laminar flow. Then the faster Allied fighters began to be attacked by a demon that lived in the air: scientists called it compressibility buffeting and different type of aircraft suffered it at different speeds and manifested itself in different ways. The American and British designers never understood the true causes behind the aerodynamic phenomenon. They were forced to adopt brute force solutions by increasing engine power on the turbojet powered fighters, leaving in the background the research on the last projects of fighters, driven by monster piston engines. The purpose of this book is to present them to the public, for its notable interest.

This is a large format A-Z encyclopedia of every Allied and Axis fighting plane from 1933-1945 - from the famous to the lesser known - in all theatres of war from Europe to Asia and the Pacific.

Allied Aircraft Piston Engines of World War II, now in its second edition, coalesces multiple aspects of war-driven aviation and its amazing technical accomplishments, leading to the allied victory during the second world war. Not by chance, the air battles that took place then defined much of the outcome of one of the bloodiest conflicts in modern history. Forward-thinking airplane design had to be developed quickly as the war raged on, and the engines that propelled them were indeed the focus of intense cutting-edge engineering efforts. Flying higher, faster, and taking the enemy down before they even noticed your presence became a matter of life or death for the allied forces. Allied Aircraft Piston Engines of World War II, Second Edition, addresses British- and American-developed engines. It looks at the piston engines in detail as they supported amazing wins both in the heat of the air battles, and on the ground supplying and giving cover to the troops. This new edition, fully revised by the original author, Graham White, offers new images and information, in addition to expanded specifications on the Rolls-Royce/ Packard Merlin and the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engines. Jay Leno, a known enthusiast, wrote the Foreword.

A detailed examination of the aircraft and tactics of the top aces in every major theater of the air war.

Allied fighter pilots began encountering German jets – principally the outstanding Me 262 fighter – from the autumn of 1944. Stunned by the aircraft's speed and rate of climb, it took USAAF and RAF units time to work out how to combat this deadly threat as the Luftwaffe targeted the medium and heavy bombers attacking targets across the Reich. A number of high-scoring aces from the Eighth Air Force (Drew, Glover, Meyer, Norley and Yeager, to name but a few) succeeded in claiming Me 262s, Me 163 and Ar 234s during the final months of the campaign, as did RAF aces like Tony Gaze and 'Foob' Fairbanks. The exploits of both famous and little-known pilots will be chronicled in this volume, detailing how they pushed their P-47s, P-51s, Spitfires and Tempests to the limits of their performance in order to down the Luftwaffe's 'wonder weapons'.

A definitive account of World War II by America's preeminent military historian. World War II was the most lethal conflict in human history. Never before had a war been fought on so many diverse landscapes and in so many different ways, from rocket attacks in London to jungle fighting in Burma to armor strikes in Libya. The Second World Wars examines how combat unfolded in the air, at sea, and on land to show how distinct conflicts among disparate combatants coalesced into one interconnected global war. Drawing on 3,000 years of military history, bestselling author Victor Davis Hanson argues that despite its novel industrial barbarity, neither the war's origins nor its geography were unusual. Nor was its ultimate outcome surprising. The Axis powers were well prepared to win limited border conflicts, but once they blundered into global war, they had no hope of victory. An authoritative new history of astonishing breadth, The Second World Wars offers a stunning reinterpretation of history's deadliest conflict.