Product Description

Shrouded in secrecy, output from the Chinese aviation industry was, until recently, largely unknown in the West. In the 1950s, when communist China and the Soviet Union were on friendly terms, the Soviet Union assisted in the establishment of the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) by delivering combat aircraft and training Chinese personnel.
Following the 1960s' rift between Moscow and Beijing, the Chinese authorities set up an indigenous aircraft industry, and as they gained experience, versions of Soviet aircraft started appearing together with their own designs.
Chinese Aircraft provides a full description of all aircraft types including the Shaanxi Y8, the Chengdu JF-17 (FC-1) light fighter, which is now entering service with the Pakistan Air Force, the Shenyang J-10, and the KJ-2000 AWACS aircraft based on the Il'yushin IL-76. It also details the factories and design institutions representing the industry over the years, including Chengdu, Guizhou, Shenyang, Xian, and Chiange and compares early and late designs to show how those organizations developed.
A special section deals with experimental types and the latest research and development while further sections are devoted to aircraft weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles, and Chinese aircraft exports on a country-by-country basis.
Numerous color profiles and three-view drawings are also included, along with the logos of production enterprises and design institutions to form a comprehensive guide to Chinese aircraft and China's aviation industry.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #153427 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 264 pages

About the Author
Yefim Gordon is one of Russia's leading aviation writers and publishers. He is the author of numerous books on Soviet aviation.

Dmitriy Komissarov is rapidly establishing himself as a respected authority on Russian and Soviet aviation. He works in the publishing industry and lives in Moscow.

Customer Reviews

An Important Contribution on an Under-Reported Subject
A book such as this was long overdue. With China's defense spending rapidly overtaking much of the rest of the world - fueled by China's skyrocketing economic growth - it is high time that Western defense analysts, and publishers, began to take Chinese aviation a little more seriously.

That being said, while this book makes an important addition to the existing literature, it is by no means a work complete unto itself.

The primary author of the book, Yefim Gordon is perhaps best known for his detailed work chronicling the evolution of many of Russia's most important fighter types. Anyone familiar with his superb publications on the MiG-29 or Su-27 will know that his previous publications often contained the kind of manufacturer and operator details that could not be found anywhere else in the English literature.

Yefim Gordon did not, however, share the kind of inside connections with China's aviation industry that he has enjoyed with Russia's fighter developers at Sukhoi or MiG. As a result, most of the information contained in this book has been published before, in the pages of such magazines as Combat Aircraft, Air Forces Monthly, Jane's Defence Weekly, or Aviation Week. Also absent from this book is the more sweeping historical overview that would allow the casual reader to understand how China's military doctrine - and attitude towards air power in general - has evolved and shifted over the decades. To find that, readers would need to turn to the many Rand Corporation publications on China, or to one of several excellent books which chronicle China's modern military history.

Despite these shortcomings, I can still recommend this book as a useful encyclopedia of Chinese aircraft types, and of Chinese aircraft manufacturers. It brings together a lot of information that someone would otherwise need to collect individually from a number of sources. It is not the complete, final word on the evolution of Chinese air power, but it is an important contribution nonetheless.

the most comprehensive compendium on that topic ... but with some big mistakes
This is for sure the most comprehensive compendium on that topic in the West and most likely it will be that for long. As already mentioned by other reviews it is very well illustrated, well written and the biggest PLUS are the magnificent side drawings.
But sadly there are several grave mistakes like "strangely" shaped noses on the J-8II and J-10 profiles (looks like a printing error as every second one is mis-shaped) and some designations and especially pictures are wrong: (only some examples) the MiG-15 is still called J-2, even if it was never produced in China and therefore received no Jian-designation, again as in the MiG-21-book there are some errors on the J-7 projects including the fan-art F-7X and a JZ-7, which never existed.
A big MINUS is the use of several photoshoped pictures like a J-10 prototype with conformal tanks, 4 LGB's and a target-designator pod and another one with chin-mounted PL-12's, there are no J-10 operated by the PLA-NA and so on.

In my opinion the biggest disappointment is the lack of any new information on "secret" projects and the use of unconfirmed rumors, which were discussed in Chinese aviation forums as "suggestions" or "assumptions" simply taken as granted), esp. the comparison of the once proposed JH-8 with the projected Su-15Sh.
Also the promised "fully described J-10 family of indigenousness fighters" is nothing more than the regular CAC J-10 with a two-page complement of colour-profiles ... some of them wrong as said and the "fact" that the Lavi-documents were transferred to CAC, which was never admitted by both sides.

Besides these and some other minor errors I'm still impressed, as it is a reference or overview even for lesser known types but a lot has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Andreas Rupprecht

A Good Introduction to the Chinese Aircraft Industry
I just finished this book. It is a pretty good introduction to the Chinese aircraft industry, but anyone looking for eye-catching photography or indepth detail is going to be sorely disappointed. This is especially true with regard to the book's treatment of China's most modern fighter aircraft. I would have also liked to have seen more 3-view drawings of the fighter aircraft instead of only the side views. There is also the element of Chinese propaganda throughout the book: the Chinese don't "copy" Western or Soviet/Russian designs, but come up with their own indigenous designs. Despite these shortcomings, it is still a pretty good book and it's nice to have what information it does contain all in one volume.