Range Unlimited - A History of Aerial Refueling

I decided to add Bill Holder's and Mike Wallace's book "Range unlimited" to my self-present Xmas list.
I must say I am underwhelmed. No, under-underwhelmed, if that exists.
The formatting is horrible. The writing is repetitive. There are three separate explanations of how the probe and drogue system works, as if the different persons who collaborated were unaware of what the others were writing, or at the very least the contents were not coordinated by a single editor. There are numerous typos (have you ever heard of "turbulance"?).
There is a picture of the Yak-36, with its rather large prominent nose duct used for reaction control in VTOL flight, with the following caption underneath:"Note the immense size of the fixed probe on this early soviet fighter". Kid you not.
The same picture is used twice throughout the book (i don't know that that's a faux pas per se, but I have never seen it done in other books).
Finally the picture quality is wildly varied. Some black and white pictures are so grainy to the point of being illegible.
Anyway, there are a few interesting things in the book, but it's painful to read it. It could have been at least decent had a serious editing effort taken place.


This one is going to the used book store.

If you think that's bad, consider the companion volume "Firepower: A History of the Aircraft Gun", co-written by Holder, which is probably the worst book Schiffer has ever published, and it's still in print! Stay away from this dog, as far as you can.

If you want a good book on aerial refuelling try 'History of Air-To-Air Refuelling' by Richard M. Tanner, published by Pen & Sword, 2006. It's a history of Flight Refuelling Ltd and is very comprhensive. It's very techie with lots of diagrams and plans but its interesting stuff.

Hood said:

If you want a good book on aerial refuelling try 'History of Air-To-Air Refuelling' by Richard M. Tanner, published by Pen & Sword, 2006. It's a history of Flight Refuelling Ltd and is very comprhensive. It's very techie with lots of diagrams and plans but its interesting stuff.

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I would second this, the book is very UK centric (hardly surprising given it is about a UK company), but is has some excellent material including plenty of secret projects (by the definition of this forum) including the TSR-2 refuelling pack amongst others.

Thanks for the tip. In fact I did purchase both at the same time, having read less-than-stellar reviews of the Holder book. I haven't started with Tanner's yet, which seems much more substantial, but i have good hopes for that one.