American Secret Projects 2: US Airlifters 1941 to 1961

I got my copy of Volume 2....FINALLY!

The first two chapters of this book talk about the history of US airlift and the challenges with airlifter design in loading, operational setting, powerplants, et cetera.
 
lark said:
lark said:
Have my copy since this morning thanks to the excellent services
of Standaard Boekhandel Belgium (31.95Eu)

Wonderfull book!

P.S : Boeing C-127 project is not mentioned nor illustrated it seems...
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Correction : Boeing C-127 is not mentioned in he indexpages but a bit text appears
on page 158. " .... It has been suggested that the model 493 was given the designation C-127
but this is not borne out by AirForce sources..."
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On pages 158 and 162 you'll find that C-127 was given to the C-124B turboprop version of the C-124 Globemaster II.
 
Mine arrived last Thursday and I'm finding it most enjoyable reading. The first two chapters make for an interesting comparison with another book, Air Mobility: A Brief History of the American Experience by Robert C. Own which I picked up at my local Half-Price Books. The latter book does frame matters quite nicely. The book is available on Amazon at reasonable prices and I can recommend it highly.
 
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ASP2: Airlifters is now listed as "In Stock" on Amazon US and the expected discount is now available.
 
Congrats to George Cox & Craig Kaston on their book, read my copy cover to cover and highly recommend it.
I’m not really a transport aircraft guy but this book deals with a fascinating period where the ultimate in piston engines and straight winged technology slowly gives way to jets of various kinds and swept wings, and the modern concept of airlifters evolves.
Even just the content on what lead to the B707 & DC-8 made buying the book worth while.
 
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This is an amazing addition to this series. There were quite a few more design studies than I was expecting and it is far more interesting then I thought it would be. I highly recommend this book and now I'm even more excited for volume 3.
 
I finally got mine and it is phenomenal, to not only read about the designs that led up to types like the C-124, C-133 and C-141, but also to the Boeing 707 and DC-8. I've never seen most of the variations in the Boeing 367 design that eventually resulted in the 367-80 prototype. And I've never seen the competitors to the C-130; one wonders that if Boeing or Douglas had won that contract, would their airplane still be in production today?

I did find a couple of errors in the large drawing on page 149; it indicates that both the 367-70-2 and -3 had J57 turbojets (even though the -3 is shown with propellers), whereas the text on page 152 says that the -2 had Olympus (J67) engines and the -3 had T34 turboprops. Not a big deal, really.
 
Hobbes said:
Derek Wood's Project Cancelled also has some airliner projects.
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Now there's a book that REALLY needs a reprint, the current relevance/correctness of its content notwithstanding. Copies I've found online have had hideous prices.

Between current and old Secret Projects issues, I have a sinking feeling I'm going to end up with a duplicate or two along the road. Never mind; I will donate those to the local library, whose aviation section is IMHO of hideously low quality.

American Secret Projects - Hypersonics, Ramjets and Missiles would be like manna from heaven for me, though I suspect it would probably end up extending over two fairly thick volumes! ;)
 
Has American Secret Projects 3 been delayed? It was due to publish on 30th September 2019 but Book Depository is showing a 15th December 2019 publication date now!

Terry (Caravellarella)
 
Caravellarella said:
Has American Secret Projects 3 been delayed? It was due to publish on 30th September 2019 but Book Depository is showing a 15th December 2019 publication date now!

Terry (Caravellarella)
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Amazon (U.S.) has been showing 15 December ever since volume 2 was split off from what had originally been announced as a single volume. Crecy is showing publication on 30 November.
 
A comment about ASP2 is the lack of the Convair R3Y Tradewind. Granted, it was originally developed as a patrol seaplane, but there was some technical work needed to convert it to a transport, and I would think that would merit at least some mention.
 
gatoraptor said:
A comment about ASP2 is the lack of the Convair R3Y Tradewind. Granted, it was originally developed as a patrol seaplane, but there was some technical work needed to convert it to a transport, and I would think that would merit at least some mention.
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Given that this book's premise is aircraft developed from the start as transport aircraft, I can understand the desire not to put the Tradewind in.

I found it very interesting. Just because the aircraft in question weren't waiting on weapon systems or high-performance engines that failed to materialize or mature doesn't mean there wasn't room for development projects to go to hell in a handbasket.
 
Caravellarella said:
Has American Secret Projects 3 been delayed? It was due to publish on 30th September 2019 but Book Depository is showing a 15th December 2019 publication date now!
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The authors came by our stand at Telford, and said that ASP 3 is almost ready. They didn't mention a specific date, but Dec 15 sounds reasonable.
 
Hobbes said:
Caravellarella said:
Has American Secret Projects 3 been delayed? It was due to publish on 30th September 2019 but Book Depository is showing a 15th December 2019 publication date now!
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The authors came by our stand at Telford, and said that ASP 3 is almost ready. They didn't mention a specific date, but Dec 15 sounds reasonable.
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I asked at your stand on Saturday and was told to expect publication next March :(

Terry (Caravellarella)
 
To be clear, Hobbes is not referring to Crecy's stand as his - the authors spoke to him at the Whatif/Project Cancelled SIG table. He was simply relaying what the authors said.
 
I noticed that Robert Hopkins said on Crecy's twitter account that hopefully Crecy would be announcing some new titles soon, including Spyflights Vol 2.
 
overscan said:
To be clear, Hobbes is not referring to Crecy's stand as his - the authors spoke to him at the Whatif/Project Cancelled SIG table. He was simply relaying what the authors said.
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I asked at the Crécy stand......

Terry (Caravellarella)
 
AL said:
I noticed that Robert Hopkins said on Crecy's twitter account that hopefully Crecy would be announcing some new titles soon, including Spyflights Vol 2.
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Glad to hear that there's going to be a volume 2. Since so much time had passed I just assumed the author had moved on to other projects.
 

American Secret Projects 3: U.S. Airlifters Since 1962: George Cox, Craig Kaston: 9781910809334: Amazon.com: Books

American Secret Projects 3: U.S. Airlifters Since 1962 [George Cox, Craig Kaston] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. This brings the story of the U.S. airlifter from the early 1960s to today’s transport giants and tomorrow’s stealth assault aircraft; revealing numerous designs...
www.amazon.com

It's been pushed back to February 15, 2020. I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but why do companies continually push back the publication date ?
 
1. Writing is not factory work. Especially when you do it in addition to a day job, schedule slips happen.

This impacts 2. the production process: you have to book a time slot at a printer, if you miss it a new slot must be found. The printer has deadlines of his own, so you may have to wait several weeks for the next available slot.

In this case there's another layer: Amazon. They aren't very good at estimating availability dates, so they're off by months in some cases, and have been known to show a book as 'not available yet' long after it's come out.

The source says:
This product will be in stock on Tuesday 31. March, 2020.
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You can order direct from them, by the way, and cut out all of Amazon's vagaries.
 
Hobbes said:
In this case there's another layer: Amazon. They aren't very good at estimating availability dates, so they're off by months in some cases, and have been known to show a book as 'not available yet' long after it's come out
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What's even more annoying is when they say a book is "Out of print, no longer available" months before the book has even been published!
 
I have it on good authority that the second volume is close to completion. It will be even longer than the first volume, and contains a lot of interesting stuff - I've seen some of it.

Back to the topic in hand - I promised Craig a review of ASP2 after he very kindly gave me a copy when we met up in San Diego.

The first thing I have to say about ASP2 is the production of the book is awesome. The 3 column layout is good, the overall page design really pleasing and Craig Kaston did an amazing job making beautiful artwork from original drawings. Having seen some of the original artwork, I can appreciate the intricate restoration work done to make sure the drawings were reproduced in the book in amazing quality. Other authors should take note!

Well, so it looks beautiful. How about the contents?

Frankly, its almost an overload of airlifters. The authors must be congratulated on an amazingly comprehensive selection of designs. It shows both the sheer inventiveness of American aircraft producers, and the massive amount of primary archival research undertaken for the book.

The first two chapters (80 Years of American Airlift and The Challenges of Airlifter Design) give an operational and technical overview of the topic of airlifters, going through some of the technical aspects of the unique engineering challenges involved in their design. I really enjoyed these chapters, as I didn't know very much about the topic.

From chapter 3, we start to look at various threads of airlifter development.

Chapter 3 Airlifter Development in the Second World War covers projects up to the end of World War 2 and the progression from converted airliners to custom-designed airlifters.
Chapter 4 Learning the Lessons of War covers the period from 1945 to 1950 ending with the Douglas C-124 and Fairchild M-82.
Chapter 5 Stretching Yesterday's Technologies covers covers 1950 to 1955 and the development of a medium airlift capability, which culminates in the incredibly successful C-130.
Chapter 6 Development of Heavy Airlift Capability covers early attempts at developing a heavy airlift capability.
Chapter 7 Strategic Air Command's Tanker Transport covers the development of the airborne tanker-transport which led to the KC-135.
Chapter 8 The Emergence of the Modern Airlifter covers 1955 to 1960 and the eventual emergence of the Lockheed C-141.
Chapter 9 New Light Airlifters covers the development of light airlifters from 1956 to 1961 including STOL..

While Chris started my education with On Atlas' Shoulders I still didn't know much about airlfter projects, and I found this book very informative in situating the US designs I knew like KC-135, C-130 and C-141 in context.

My point of comparison must be Chris Gibson's On Atlas' Shoulders, which covers British airlifter designs. I definitely prefer ASP2's use of cleaned up original drawings to Chris Gibson's use of redrawn artwork, but that's something we've disagreed on before. However, On Atlas' Shoulders is often able to tell a more rounded story of the Ministry thinking behind the formulation of the requirements, as well as the manufacturer's responses, while ASP2 sometimes reads like a summary of a sequence of interesting manufacturer brochures.

I believe this difference can be somewhat attributed to the relatively well indexed UK National Archives, where Ministry files on specification formulation are often available, as compared to the rather less organised US NARA, but perhaps also to the somewhat 'Byzantine' aircraft procurement process in the UK lending itself to preservation of records.

Overall this is a really excellent book which I highly recommend, and I am really interested to see the second volume, which being more recent is more my era of interest. I've already seen some really intriguing designs on Craig's laptop, so hopefully it won't be too long until it is released!
 
overscan said:
My point of comparison must be Chris Gibson's On Atlas' Shoulders, which covers British airlifter designs. I definitely prefer ASP2's use of cleaned up original drawings to Chris Gibson's use of redrawn artwork, but that's something we've disagreed on before. However, On Atlas' Shoulders is often able to tell a more rounded story of the Ministry thinking behind the formulation of the requirements, as well as the manufacturer's responses, while ASP2 sometimes reads like a summary of a sequence of interesting manufacturer brochures.
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I think there is subtle difference in that the 'Secret Projects' brand is a catalogue type book where you expect to be dazzled with projects and where the space for context is more limited but there are lots of juicy images. The Hikoki 'Since 1945' series is slightly different in that there is more about the context behind the designs as equal weight it devoted to the built and the unbuilt and explaining why the built were chosen and why the unbuilt remained on the drawing board.

But there is no doubt that ASP.2 is perhaps one of the best of the series.
 

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