Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #214984 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 176 pages

About the Author
Dieter Herwig, born in 1926, was called up for service with the Luftwaffen-Lehrregiment at Berlin-Gatow, on the strength of his earlier flying training. By the war's end he had been posted to Berlin-Adlershof, where he was a member of staff of the Chief of Aircraft Procurement and Supply's Central Scientific Records Office for Aviation Research (ZWB), which was subordinated to the Reichsluftfahrtsministerium (RLM). After the war he published Germany's first specialized aviation periodical, Aero Magazin, and many other works. Dieter Herwig has built up one of the largest aviation collections in Germany and heads the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luftfahrtdokumentation (German Association for Aviation Documentation) and the Deutsches Studienbüro für Luftfahrt (German Aviation Study Bureau) in Frankfurt am Main. Heinz Rode, born in Berlin in 1932, has been a freelance graphic designer and press artist for more than 30 years. He is also an illustrator of non-fiction historical books. His special interests are aviation and space. Among his other works, he has produced several hundred titles and covers for books, films, specialist magazines, catalogs and newspapers. The fine color illustrations in this book are all products of his talent and brush.

Customer Reviews

third volume of an excellent collection
Covering projects between 1935 and 1945 this volume closes an excellent three book collection.

As the other books of the serie, it's focused in the design and develop of military proyects of the german aircraft industry, from the engineering point of view, not the operational one.

It covers principally the projects or development that did not reach operational use.

Essential if you are interested in second world war german airplanes.

Moderation is the key
This volume gives an idea of how wide-ranging were the Nazi plans and ideas. They spread themselves so wide that they, thankfully, overstepped their ability to produce. Without some focus on the tasks at hand, they were off in a hundred different directions. The authors have, with all three volumes, shown the advanced thinking coming out of Germany. But they also show the bureaus doing scattered if effective work. These are worth having not only to see what they had planned, but also to show a national leadership leaping and bounding here and there trying to solve problems by bringing new production as the solution. These books are worth having.

Pretty Pictures, but disappointing research
Page 7 of this book contains a remarkable Publisher's Note, in which the publisher acknowledges the efforts of translator Ted Oliver (for this book was originally written in German) for his efforts to improve on the original version and the addition of "commentary on the author's erroneous text repeated from sources known to be incorrect or speculative." It must be almost unique to have such a statement in the foreword of a book.

There still is a lot of interesting material in this book, including many fascinating reproductions of original German drawings. But the text is took skimpy, and too much space is devoted to often speculative artwork. This book creates an appetite for more, but one is left feeling dissatisfied and in doubt about the validity of what one has just read.

I don't regret buying this; it is a book worth having. But compared to Tony Buttler's really excellent series on British Secret Projects (which is, that is true, rather harder to digest) this is the work of a dilettante.