Secret Aerospace Projects of the U.S. Navy Vol. 1 1948-1949 OUT NOW!

The bulk of the data seems to come from the National Archives. But *which* National Archives facility? If it was the College Park, MD, facility, I shall scream and use foul language, as when I was there nobody had the slightest clue as to whether they had item one regarding aircraft
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Scott, the bibliography of Jared's book cites exactly the College Park, Maryland facility, record groups are RG 72, 341, 428 (the BuAer-related groups, I presume). The RG 72 group is cited as the source for both his published booklets on civlian Martin Mars and NAA F5J.
From my experience with Italian National Archives, which are smaller and less organized than US ones (and much depleted, expecially on aeronautcal subjects...), you have to work from the organizational structure down to the information flux they were soprting in every point in time to have a slight idea of WHERE things could be... Sometimes, moreover, information is distributed in more copies, and so something that could be missing in its destination record, could be preserved in a collateral one. All in all, time consuming....
 
Orionblamblam said:
The bulk of the data seems to come from the National Archives. But *which* National Archives facility? If it was the College Park, MD, facility, I shall scream and use foul language, as when I was there nobody had the slightest clue as to whether they had item one regarding aircraft.
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I get some help from the staff on the records floor whenever I'm there, but it's not hand holding like it is up on the photo floor, where the staff is terrific about suggesting card files to look in. I've looked through the Record Group 72 three-ring binder (a synopsis of which is available on line) which constitutes its "catalogue" several times without seeing anything that would cause me to believe stuff like Jared found was in that record group. On the other hand, I did find a Navy acceptance flight test report on the XF4U Corsair quite by accident in a box of sort of related stuff. I think of it as an Easter egg hunt. There are microfilm and classified sections which I haven't tried to access though, and maybe that's where the remaining treasures reside...
 
overscan said:
Hmmm. Does AvWeek have reviews?

;D
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yes, it does!

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a4b5f0751-0fdf-4ce8-8d9e-692ba28ea935
 
RG 341, which is cited regarding the Fairchild Model-121 (SAC bomber proposal) and only that, seems to be a record group related to the Air Force SAC in case somebody goes there....
 
Confirmed, RG 341 is dedicated to the US Air Force central offices.. Time coverage is patchy, in some cases only arrives to the mid-50s, and there is a security classification problem, too, I think. All in all, RG 341 contains more that 10 millions of individual documents....
 
I got my copy from Amazon yesterday. Really surprising book. This is the first time for me to see such wonderful projects including carrier United States. I can't believe that those are 40's project.
 
This is a very cool book. Congratulations to the writer and publisher.

I did notice a small error that they may want to fix in a future edition. There is a page with several of the Douglas Santa Monica VA design's SAC tables. The SAC table for the 4,000lb bomb version is missing and the SAC for the 10,000lb bomb version without a tail gun is repeated twice. If possible I would really like to see the SAC table for the 4,000lb bomb version posted here.
 
Oops! I will try to locate that and post it here this weekend. My apologies.

Thanks to everyone who has purchased the book and magazines thus far. I am *almost* done with the third issue of the American Aerospace Archive covering the heavy bombardment competition of 1946 and follow-on studies by Douglas; it's a 60 pager, heavily illustrated, hopefully will be on sale by early next week. The day job keeps pushing completion of it back a few days. I also got a new computer that I need to assemble (my first attempt at building my own workstation), but I've decided to finish the magazine before I embark on that adventure! :eek:
 
jzichek said:
Oops! I will try to locate that and post it here this weekend. My apologies.

Thanks to everyone who has purchased the book and magazines thus far. I am *almost* done with the third issue of the American Aerospace Archive covering the heavy bombardment competition of 1946 and follow-on studies by Douglas; it's a 60 pager, heavily illustrated, hopefully will be on sale by early next week. The day job keeps pushing completion of it back a few days. I also got a new computer that I need to assemble (my first attempt at building my own workstation), but I've decided to finish the magazine before I embark on that adventure! :eek:
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Look forward to the new book.

I mistakenly mentioned that the SAC chart misprint was the Douglas Santa Monica designs but it was of course the Douglas El Segundo designs (their original El Segundo factory is still in operation for Northrop building Super Hornet centre barrels). Its on page 56 where the SAC for the Douglas Model 593 and 593-1 are printed with the spotting diagram for the 593-2. The 593-1 SAC is repeated and the 593-2 is missing.
 
Here are the missing General Characteristics for the Douglas Model 593-2; replaces chart in lower right of p. 56 in the book.
 

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Bought a copy from a trader at the model show at the RAF museum in Cosford today, superb publication with loads of detail on the various proposals. Worth the hefty asking price.

Now to start thinking about how to kitbash/scratchbuild some of the designs in here.... ;)

cheers

Duncan
 
Finally got my copy of this from Amazon US.

Firstly, great book. Its a bit earlier than I normally find interesting but the designs are really unconventional and futuristic. Great to see so many original drawings. I definitely recommend it - nice work Jared.

However, I do have some minor gripes with Schiffer. My copy had poorly cut pages. Several pages were attached together at the top right corner where they hadn't been correctly trimmed. The margins were inconsistent, leading me to assume they misaligned more of the pages during cutting. Its not worth sending it back due to the cost of postage to the US so I'll live with it.

Given the cover price of $60 (compared to $44.95 for Tommy's Strike From the Sea) I really expect better quality control.

More personally, I think many of the drawings would have benefited from minor photo-editing to increase contrast. Some of the drawings are very faint.
 
Well, better later than never. I finally received today my copy from Amazon US.

I'm very surprised for the book really the projects are incredible. I found specially interesting the Fairchild m-121/m-128. I'm a big sci-fi fan, and secret projects enthusiast but this project has totally new ideas for me.

My only complain is the same than overscan:
overscan said:
More personally, I think many of the drawings would have benefited from minor photo-editing to increase contrast. Some of the drawings are very faint.
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It's a shame so nice drawings but even if I scan at maximum resolution I can't see the details. I'd pay more just to have the drawings in a bigger scale or at least with more contrast.

Regards
Luis
 
This is conspicuously numbered 'Vol. 1' - any ideas as to when volume 2 (and 3 and 4 and...) might be released?
 
I miss Jared's great publications. Hope to see new books im the future.
 
I forgot to mention that I have bought this book too.
Great book, many incredible designs. Some designs are so far out there that they look like they come from a sci-fi novel.
But they were ideas once considered to be mass-produced :O
Looking forward for part 2 :)

Cheers,

Rob
 
Where is a little,- preview the entire contents of the book J can not find link
thanks in advance
 

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