Any Author on Soviet/Russian Aircraft OTHER than Yefim Gordon?

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Bruno Anthony

I miss the Cold War
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I own 3 of Yefim Gordon’s book and I rather not buy any more of them.

Typical Yefim Gordon book format, let’s assume a particular aircraft type.
1. The design bureau was given a task to counter a threat from a Western aircraft to either the USSR/Russia or an ally
2. EMPHASIZE that there were constant interference by say Stalin and no resources to work with to compete with new Western threat
3. EMPHASIZE that even with no resources, the bureau produced a better Aircraft & components than the Western counterpart
4. If it saw combat EMPHASIZE that the untrained pilots defeated the unskilled, cowardly America pilots
5. If it didn’t see combat, EMPHASIZE that the aircraft/components are superior to its counterpart

I can’t take anymore the digging through the Central Committee Bu*(sh%@ to find the nugget of legitimate info.

Is Piotr Butowski or Alexander Mladenov a better option/s?
 
A have a couple of his books and I don’t that’s a fair or accurate of his structure or approach.
His comments say more about commenters perspective and prejudices than Yefim Gordon’s.
 
There's not much alternative in English. Both the authors above have written good articles and books but no equivalent monographs. Ildar Bedretdinov's Su-25 and Su-27 (Part 1) are pretty good.
 
I’ve sort of noticed this a few times as well, but what concerns me more are the recognition and some other technical mistakes. For example I recall that a picture of an obvious pipe-laying variant of the Yak-24 was misidentified as some unheard of testbed for a specialized EW system (mistaking the pipe racks for antenna arrays I guess, lmao) and referring to it with a designation applied to a VIP variant.

His books are generally good reads (I’m obviously a fangirl for his Mi-24 book, lol) but it’s advisable to fact check some of the details when using them for research purposes.
 
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You can try Piotr Butowski and his books at Harpia Publishing. BTW, their site is currently down due to a software update.
1., Russia's Warplanes, Volume 1
2., Russia's Warplanes, Volume 2
3., Russian Air-launched Weapons
4., Flashpoint Russia
These books are available at all major aviation book dealers.
 
Peter Wimpsey said:
You can try Piotr Butowski and his books at Harpia Publishing. BTW, their site is currently down due to a software update.
1., Russia's Warplanes, Volume 1
2., Russia's Warplanes, Volume 2
3., Russian Air-launched Weapons
4., Flashpoint Russia
These books are available at all major aviation book dealers.
Click to expand...

I put Russian Air Launched Weapons in my Cart.
 
Bruno Anthony said:
I own 3 of Yefim Gordon’s book and I rather not buy any more of them.

Typical Yefim Gordon book format, let’s assume a particular aircraft type.
1. The design bureau was given a task to counter a threat from a Western aircraft to either the USSR/Russia or an ally
2. EMPHASIZE that there were constant interference by say Stalin and no resources to work with to compete with new Western threat
3. EMPHASIZE that even with no resources, the bureau produced a better Aircraft & components than the Western counterpart
4. If it saw combat EMPHASIZE that the untrained pilots defeated the unskilled, cowardly America pilots
5. If it didn’t see combat, EMPHASIZE that the aircraft/components are superior to its counterpart

I can’t take anymore the digging through the Central Committee Bu*(sh%@ to find the nugget of legitimate info.

Is Piotr Butowski or Alexander Mladenov a better option/s?
Click to expand...
A, In y opinion, you can't really compare the two.
B, Piotr has a way better technical understanding due to his language knowledge and 40 years of travels to Russia.
C, Alexander is at least a good back-up.
D, Piotr produced in the 1990s and now rather different books than YG with way more technical depth and knowledge.
 
Piotr Butowski is a very good author with some excellent connections, no doubt. His current magazine articles are good, and his old Polish language publications were also great. I've not read any recent books of his. The Harpia books offend me with their page layout and style (so few words! So large! Such a waste of glossy paper! Looks like a book for children or people with ADHD... ) so I've not purchased them. I'm sure the writing is probably excellent.
 
Peter Wimpsey said:
Bruno Anthony said:
I own 3 of Yefim Gordon’s book and I rather not buy any more of them.

Typical Yefim Gordon book format, let’s assume a particular aircraft type.
1. The design bureau was given a task to counter a threat from a Western aircraft to either the USSR/Russia or an ally
2. EMPHASIZE that there were constant interference by say Stalin and no resources to work with to compete with new Western threat
3. EMPHASIZE that even with no resources, the bureau produced a better Aircraft & components than the Western counterpart
4. If it saw combat EMPHASIZE that the untrained pilots defeated the unskilled, cowardly America pilots
5. If it didn’t see combat, EMPHASIZE that the aircraft/components are superior to its counterpart

I can’t take anymore the digging through the Central Committee Bu*(sh%@ to find the nugget of legitimate info.

Is Piotr Butowski or Alexander Mladenov a better option/s?
Click to expand...
A, In y opinion, you can't really compare the two.
B, Piotr has a way better technical understanding due to his language knowledge and 40 years of travels to Russia.
C, Alexander is at least a good back-up.
D, Piotr produced in the 1990s and now rather different books than YG with way more technical depth and knowledge.
Click to expand...

Excellent summary. I think I’ve found my BS-free alternatives. I have no idea why Comrade Gordon’s books are so fawned over. A man dying of thirst thinks piss is delicious I guess.
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
Piotr Butowski is a very good author with some excellent connections, no doubt. His current magazine articles are good, and his old Polish language publications were also great. I've not read any recent books of his. The Harpia books offend me with their page layout and style (so few words! So large! Such a waste of glossy paper! Looks like a book for children or people with ADHD... ) so I've not purchased them. I'm sure the writing is probably excellent.
Click to expand...

Paul, I must admit that this surprises me; in fact I'm shocked! o_O

You ignore or even refuse a book regardless the content, only since you don't like the layout??

Please don't get me wrong, but what you refer to as "looks like a book for children or people with ADHD" would I rate a well illustrated reference book full with a plethora of information presented in a most readable way.
Even more, a lot of its information You cannot find in any other book or against Yefim, what kind of benefit does it have to post several more images, most often showing nothing but the same aircraft in just another angle or position?!

Again, I always thought you are man of content but that you would once ignore facts and knowledge due to the look, that disappoints me (maybe since my own CHinese books follwo a simialr style).

Anyway as so often, "beauty lays in the eyes of the beholder!".

Best and take care,
Andreas
 
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Deino said:
Paul, I must admit that this surprises me; in fact I'm shocked! o_O

You ignore or even refuse a book regardless the content, only since you don't like the layout??

Please don't get me wrong, but what you refer to as "looks like a book for children or people with ADHD" would I rate a well illustrated reference book full with a plethora of information presented in a most readable way.
Even more, a lot of its information You cannot find in any other book or against Yefim, what kind of benefit does it have to post several more images, most often showing nothing but the same aircraft in just another angle or position?!

Again, I always thought you are man of content but that you would once ignore facts and knowledge due to the look, that disappoints me (maybe since my own CHinese books follwo a simialr style).

Anyway as so often, "beauty lays in the eyes of the beholder!".

Best and take care,
Andreas
Click to expand...
Belated reply -

In general, Harpia as a publisher is about operations, ORBATs, etc. Not my area of interest, I want to know history, development, technical details.

Piotr's books for Harpia are focused on current Russian aeroplanes and missiles. I'm not that interested in this topic, aside from say the Su-57 (I have Piotr's Su-57 book).

An overview of many different types of this kind is never going to be that interesting to me, given I have entire shelves of books in English and Russian on Russian manufacturers of aircraft, engines, avionics, many dozens of individual aircraft monographies, hundreds of Russian language periodicals, etc.

That doesn't mean they aren't useful to someone else.
 
Deino said:
Paul, I must admit that this surprises me; in fact I'm shocked! o_O

You ignore or even refuse a book regardless the content, only since you don't like the layout??

Please don't get me wrong, but what you refer to as "looks like a book for children or people with ADHD" would I rate a well illustrated reference book full with a plethora of information presented in a most readable way.
Even more, a lot of its information You cannot find in any other book or against Yefim, what kind of benefit does it have to post several more images, most often showing nothing but the same aircraft in just another angle or position?!

Again, I always thought you are man of content but that you would once ignore facts and knowledge due to the look, that disappoints me (maybe since my own CHinese books follwo a simialr style).

Anyway as so often, "beauty lays in the eyes of the beholder!".

Best and take care,
Andreas
Click to expand...

Deino,

Perhaps Paul's account has been hacked by Pasoleati?
There are many. more horrid, examples of layout crime than Harpia.

Chris
 
Perhaps the criticism of layout was a bit over the top, but like it I do not. It has a slight resemblance to Chris's books for Crecy but worse.

Size: 21x28cm

If you can't fit two columns of text in a near A4 page, you are doing it wrong.
 
CJGibson said:
Deino,

Perhaps Paul's account has been hacked by Pasoleati?
There are many. more horrid, examples of layout crime than Harpia.

Chris
Click to expand...
Ha ha! As the samples above show, there is much to be improved in Harpia's (and some other's too) layout. Granted, most of Harpia's books are on topics that do not really interest me (=jet-era combat operations). But, for layout, the old Aerofax titles were superb. No wasted space and overall a very engineering-style efficient and very clear layout giving the reader best bang for a buck. I don't understand why increase page count by 30 - 50 % by having masses of wasted space because there is no benefit while the unnecessary page count increase increases all costs from printing, paper, storage to shipping and therefore the price.
 

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