Curtiss-Wright (Images of America) Paperback – Import, 30 November 2005

My parents worked at Curtis during the war. The company has historic ties to Buffalo, NY. I also collect Images of America Books.

Livre correspondant à mon attente sur un sujet peu évoqué.Livre correspondant à mon attente sur un sujet peu évoqué.Livre correspondant à mon attente sur un sujet peu évoqué.

The book was recommended by the American Aviation Historical Society. I cannot. The book opens with a frontispiece photograph that looks like it was salvaged from the darkroom floor. Dirt specks, scratches and partially reversed tonality. Depicted is a mundane scene of a P-40 on a compass rose. Try as I might, I cannot see anything significant about the subject that would cause this photo to be used. Anyway, the book goes from there. Especially in the coverage of the WW II era. Some of the captions are just plain lies. The C-76, for example, is considered by history to be a very poor design. Few were built. One crashed during testing, killing its crew. The Army cancelled the remaining contract in 1943. The book baldly states that the war ended before the plane was ready for service. The SO3C observation aircraft lasted less than a year in service before it was declared obsolete due to unresolved aerodynamic problems and an unreliable engine. The SB2C dive bomber took over four years worth of development before the Navy put it into service, desperate for a replacement for the aging SBD. The SB2C did not stay in Navy service for long, eitherIn short, the book doesn't mention the general decline C-W went into during the war and when it does, it seems to try and gloss matters over. I've only mentioned a few examples here and there are plenty others. As the previous review declared, this is a book you might read in a library but I could not recommend owning it.