Reviews in English
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I want to fly!
2012English160 pg.I trust there is nobody who – like Ding Duck – has had 5,000 flying lessons and still cannot fly! This endearing book is about a sweet little duck who, despite all the necessary materials being available to him: a tower, a flight instructor, a beautiful runway, and despite his very best efforts, he just cannot […]
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Imperial Outpost in the Gulf
2012English238 pg.After having reviewed ‘History in the Arab Skies’ by Gerald Butt, quite by chance I came across this little gem of a book about Sharjah airfield, close to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Its author, Nicholas Stanley-Price, was the cultural heritage advisor to the Sharjah Museums Department in the UAE from 2007 to […]
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The spectacle of flight
2005English323 pg.0-300-10692-0Never thought I would write 50 reviews about aviation books, but here it really is: my 50th review! And to think that, as a child, I hated books. I didn’t even read the bubbles in comic strips. I am humbly grateful to all those writers of beautiful books who gradually won me round! I carefully […]
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Heroes and landmarks of British aviation
2012English257 pg.978-1-84884-645-6My interest in British aviation dates from a good 25 years ago when, as a boy I was regularly to be found, practically glued to the perimeter fence of RAF Wildenrath in Germany, jotting down airplane numbers. I’ve fished out the notebook I used at the time. Thumbing through it I see among the entries […]
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A hundred feet over hell
Motorbooks InternationalEnglish272 pg.978-0760336335The Vietnam war, which was in many ways an exceptional war – for the US, that is – ended some 40 years ago, but really good books about it continue to be published. The famous Chickenhawk by ex-UH-1 pilot Robert Mason came out in 1984. Karl Marlantes published his ‘Matterhorn’ in 2010, but we will […]
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Last of the few
2010English274 pg.9780753522271You couldn’t get closer to the Battle of Britain than this book. Max Arthur has split the air war into 6 episodes from ‘Learning to fly’ to ‘First combat’ and ‘The battle for France’ right through to the different phases of the ‘Battle of Britain’ which was largely fought over the Channel and the U.K. […]
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Alive
1974Dutch, Spanish334 pg.90 290 2673 1Many people might still recall the events of 13 October 1972, when a Fairchild F-227 of the Uruguayan air force crashed in the Andes with 45 people on board. The plane was carrying the members of a Uruguayan amateur rugby team along with some of their family members and friends, and it was bound for […]
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History in the Arab skies
2011English232 pg.978-9963-610-73-0Imagine you can teleport yourself back to the year 1922 and then imagine that you are flying over 500 miles of unending sand from Cairo to Baghdad without any landmarks to help you. Oh, yes, there are no radio beacons and you don’t have any GPS, ATC, etc. How do you do that? Simple! You […]
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Chickenhawk
Penguin Books1984English399 pg.0-552-12419-2We are transported back in time to the mid-sixties. For a twenty-year period between 1955 and 1975 war raged in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The plot revolves around the fact that a number of countries, including the US, considered that the communists were becoming far too powerful in the region and that something had to […]
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Aerospace design
2003English, Dutch191 pg.1858942071These days I am increasingly wondering whether I, as a reviewer of books, am critical enough. Could there possibly be a downside to holding a PPL License which might be causing me to devour only good books instead of reading mediocre to bad books and drilling them into the ground with a flourish? Is it […]