Some Future Titles of Interest for SPF Members

Owens Z said:
Thanks, Arjen and Oluen. My German, unfortunately, is too limited to make a purchase of this volume worthwhile (about the fascinating rocket plane designs of Eugen Sänger, and the Sänger II TSTO project of the 1980s), and I don't see an English edition of it among Schiffer Publishing's titles. Maybe someday.
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Schiffer does have another book about Sänger and his rocket bomber:
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Sanger: Germany's Orbital Rocket Bomber in World War II: Myhra, David: 9780764315497: Amazon.com: Books

Sanger: Germany's Orbital Rocket Bomber in World War II [Myhra, David] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Sanger: Germany's Orbital Rocket Bomber in World War II
www.amazon.com
 
Pasoleati said:
I have all 3 (Fiat, Macchi, S. 79). Since my to-read pile is massive, I have not read them fully or even close but the parts I have read seem to be in good English. And I think the contents are overall good and worth the price. I have not checked do they have handling reports etc. Interestingly, the Fiat-volume is printed in Turkey!
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GTX said:
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elmayerle said:
Definitely on my "To Buy" list. After this one, I hope he does lesser Italian fighter designs, such as Caproni-Vizzola.
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A welcome arrival from Amazon: the newly published third volume of Luigino Caliaro's trilogy about Italian fighter planes of WW2, this one on airplanes from Reggiane, a spinoff from Caproni. The book appears well laid out and well produced (by Crecy), and I look forward to reading it. This volume has a reserved place on my shelf next to the excellent second volume, on Fiat fighters.

(Despite Dagger's good advice [post #901 above], I still haven't been able to find at a reasonable price the too-soon-out-of-print first volume, on Macchi fighters. A Crecy representative confirmed to me that they have no plans to reprint that first volume, or Mr Caliaro's book on the S.79 Sparviero bomber. Disappointing.)
 

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I do wish he'd do a fourth book on lesser-known Italian fighter manufactures.

I do have all three of his fighter books and they are fascinating. I do wish, though, that the projects section had more on the Re2004 and Re2006.
 
Dagger said:
Chance Vought Regulus II
Steve Ginter
Naval Fighters Number 125
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I have a Schiffer book on Regulus. Came out a couple of decades ago. Some great photos of the subs as well as line drawings.


Sorry, not Schiffer, and more than a couple of decades ago:

Regulus: America's First Nuclear Submarine Missile by David K Stumpf, Turner Publishing Company, 1996.
 
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Antonio said:
Available from July 2025
"All the major types are covered, from all-weather fighters, interceptors, strike aircraft, anti-submarine helicopters and airborne early warning aircraft. as are many design studies and proposals that remained on the drawing board. Guided missiles during the post-war period and the evolution of the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers and the new technologies required to operate jet aircraft from ships are also analysed."
Promising... :)
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overscan (PaulMM) said:
Another book by forum member @Hood. Looks good.
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SteveO said:
Got my copy of Wings Over the Fleet yesterday and would highly recommend it based on just the initial flick through. Great looking book James!
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Received my purchased copy of Wings Over the Fleet: British Naval Aircraft Since 1945 by James Jackson yesterday; US$29.42 via Amazon. The book proves to be quite hefty, with good paper and binding, and (like SteveO praised) is attractively laid out and well produced. I look forward to digging in. May this new book be the bestseller it deserves—congratulations to the author.
 

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blackstar said:
That could be an interesting topic if done well. There was a Yamato movie done in the past decade, and of course there's Space Battleship Yamato. Clearly the ship is symbolic of something for the Japanese, but symbolic of what? Was it their lost cause during the war, or an honorable sacrifice, or the folly of sending 3055 men to their deaths?
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Dunno. Pretty much every culture has some variant of the "Lost Cause" myth. Maybe in portraying the Yamato as honorable their portraying everyone who died in the war as honorable.?
 
garand1937 said:
Dunno. Pretty much every culture has some variant of the "Lost Cause" myth. Maybe in portraying the Yamato as honorable their portraying everyone who died in the war as honorable.?
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We'll have to read the book to find out, right?

Yes, the lost cause myth is persistent. And powerful. You can see that in various aspects of American history like The Alamo. If you're old enough, you might remember school textbooks that mentioned "Custer's Last Stand" which portrayed him as losing honorably. Only later did historians point out that Custer was a horrible person and the battle was not the heroic fight that was mythologized.

The final stages of the War in the Pacific have been studied in many books. Japan really romanticized their sacrifice during the war (not just after). Many pilots and sailors knew they were going to die and turned that into something romantic, with poetry and paintings. It's different than how Western cultures addressed warfare, although I'm sure there are many parallels. (See, for instance, how the British sent whole villages of young men off to fight in World War I with a romanticized idea of what they were doing.)
 
Jayslater said:
Fonthill Media, an imprint of Pen and Sword, will be publishing Graf Zeppelin this month (February 2026)...
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US publication of Fonthill's new book Graf Zeppelin: The Story of Hitler's Aircraft Carrier by Daniel Knowles has been pushed back to late April, according to Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
 
Owens Z said:
...Even Iran's Revolutionary Guard now has a semi-carrier. And the number of carrier-equipped navies continues to grow: as discussed in a different thread, Indonesia has expressed serious interest in acquiring Italy's Giuseppe Garibaldi.
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blackstar said:
Just to be clear, for about 20 years after WWII, a bunch of nations besides the US and UK operated aircraft carriers. That number dropped a lot in the 1970s and 1980s. In the past decade, a bunch of nations have started building carriers again, or helicopter carriers that have wider use such as disaster response.
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Following up on post #1122 discussing an opportunity for a new updated reference on world aircraft carriers, note that Indonesia's acquisition of Italy's retired Giuseppe Garibaldi is proceeding, and the aircraft carrier is planned to arrive in Indonesian waters later this year.

But remove Iran from the list: according to news reports, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' 40,000-ton semi-carrier Shahid Bagheri has been destroyed.
 
Owens Z said:
Following up on post #1122 discussing an opportunity for a new updated reference on world aircraft carriers, note that Indonesia's acquisition of Italy's retired Giuseppe Garibaldi is proceeding, and the aircraft carrier is planned to arrive in Indonesian waters later this year.

But remove Iran from the list: according to news reports, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' 40,000-ton semi-carrier Shahid Bagheri has been destroyed.
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There is a current Key Publishing "bookazine" available (it is on the magazine shelves at Barnes & Noble) on aircraft carriers. The end chapter is a quick overview of current carriers.

There have been a number of recent publications that have also focused on current world carriers. Softcover. They are generally a bit superficial and don't go into detail about the ships or their operations.

I am not sure that the Shahid Bagheri story is accurate. Another ship with a large helicopter flight deck was attacked and in satellite photos is visibly burning. However, I saw a report that the Bagheri may have moved yesterday. So reports of its demise may have been premature. (Note: I am not saying that it was not destroyed, just that the reports may not have been totally accurate. It certainly is a sitting duck.)


Update: attached photo of a new bookazine I just found on the magazine IMG_1562 copy.jpg shelf at Barnes & Noble.
 
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bobbymike said:

The Impossible Factory: The Remarkable True Story of Kelly Johnson and the Lockheed Skunk Works, America's Innovation Machine: Dean, Josh: 9781524745516: Amazon.com: Books

The Impossible Factory: The Remarkable True Story of Kelly Johnson and the Lockheed Skunk Works, America's Innovation Machine [Dean, Josh] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Impossible Factory: The Remarkable True Story of Kelly Johnson and the Lockheed Skunk Works...
www.amazon.com
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Really, again? How many times now?

Josh Dean is a New York based journalist whose work has appeared in Popular Science, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, GQ, Men's Journal, Rolling Stone, Inc., Fast Company, ESPN the Magazine, and many others
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Hmm....
 
oluen said:
The only issue is that David Baker has written a loooot of books about, maybe, too many themes: rockets, spacecrafts, nuclear bombs, migs...
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oluen said:
Certainly this is a matter of taste, but I'm a firm believer in "Jack of all trades, master of none". Some minor examples: In [David Baker's] book about the mig-29 (haynes) he makes some statements against the Luftwaffe reports and public knowledge (like the 29 being well beyond western counterparts... ). In the one related to nuclear weapons there are surprising errors describing basic physics like defining the electron as neutrally charged...
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LowObservable said:
...Having had occasion to study some of ex-Dr. Baker's work in great detail, I wonder how and where he became an expert in combat aircraft.
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gatoraptor said:
I would call the Key bookazine a condensed version of the Haynes and Crecy titles, since Baker was responsible for all three.
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I have enjoyed the writing of British author David Baker, PhD since I read his speculative space technology articles in Air International during the 1990s, and I have since purchased several of his books. According to the back cover of his 2015 Haynes Owners' Workshop Manual: Rocket, "Dr David Baker worked with NASA on the Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle programmes between 1965 and 1990. He has written more than 90 books on spaceflight technology..." This (see attached PNG file) is the author photo that Amazon uses, which shows a man at least forty years younger than a Gemini engineer would look. Unless Dr Baker truly has Bilbo Baggins-level preservation, this must be an Amazon error. Or perhaps the author of recent aviation books like Fifth Generation Fighters and US Air Power 1945-1990 is an entirely different person from the space-related Dr Baker, and may or may not be related? 'David Baker' is of course a common name. Anybody here know about this matter?

Schneiderman said:
Good to see, Baker's earlier works are excellent
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Dagger said:
Look what I found in my mail box this morning: The book has 384 pages A4/Letter size, and they corrected the cover flub that starviking noted earlier.
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Following up on post # 810 above, an editor at Crécy told me that publication of (the space-related) David Baker's book NASA Lost Missions: 1964-75 is unlikely in 2026. Also delayed out of this year is Dr Baker's big Saturn V companion volume to his successful Saturn I/IB book by Crécy. (These are orphaned Haynes projects.)
 

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Owens Z said:
I have enjoyed the writing of British author David Baker, PhD since I read his speculative space technology articles in Air International during the 1990s, and I have since purchased several of his books. According to the back cover of his 2015 Haynes Owners' Workshop Manual: Rocket, "Dr David Baker worked with NASA on the Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle programmes between 1965 and 1990. He has written more than 90 books on spaceflight technology..." This (see attached PNG file) is the author photo that Amazon uses, which shows a man at least forty years younger than a Gemini engineer would look. Unless Dr Baker truly has Bilbo Baggins-level preservation, this must be an Amazon error. Or perhaps the author of recent aviation books like Fifth Generation Fighters and US Air Power 1945-1990 is an entirely different person from the space-related Dr Baker, and may or may not be related? 'David Baker' is of course a common name. Anybody here know about this matter?
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Not sure from which Amazon you got that photo, but the Amazons that I know show a different photo, for example amazon.co.uk:

David Baker.jpg

However there seems to be some doubt about his actual work experience at NASA:

David Baker (author) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Dagger said:
Not sure from which Amazon you got that photo, but the Amazons that I know show a different photo, for example amazon.co.uk:
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Yes, the photo for David Baker that I showed is on Amazon USA. Your photo looks more believable.

Dagger said:
However there seems to be some doubt about his actual work experience at NASA:
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Thanks, Dagger. So he admits that he never had a PhD, and nobody at NASA can vouch for his claimed labor on Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle? This is distressing. Dr (er, Mr) Baker has done good work, e.g. as editor of Jane's Space Directory, but I will have to consider whether I wish to continue supporting a fabulist by purchasing his books.
 
alberchico said:
There are so many interesting titles coming out from Helion I think it'd be easier to link to their page so you can see for yourself what they have to offer: https://www.helion.co.uk/forthcoming-military-history-books.php
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I hadn't heard of military history publisher Helion & Company Ltd of Warwick, England before Alberchico's post #1064 above, nor do I recall ever seeing their titles on the shelves of American bookstores. I have purchased via Amazon two newly published books about the F-7 fighter plane (Communist China's version of the MiG-21) by Holger Müller, who in his youth maintained MiG-21s for the air force of East Germany. The books apparently are translated from Mr Müller's original German, but the text reads well. I see that Helion paperbacks have a larger trim size and more pages than the popular titles of Osprey Publishing which they resemble. Good binding, and quality glossy paper.

I will watch their website for forthcoming Helion titles of interest. Thanks, Alberchico.
 

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zjz said:
Sorry if it is out of topic, but I have an article here on David Baker for anyone who may be interested ....
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The link would not allow me access, but I found your referred article "Space editor [David Baker] quits over fraud claims" on page 11 of the May 2021 issue of Physics World in my local public library. Baker resigned on 25 March 2021 as editor of the journal SpaceFlight after "allegations" that he hadn't worked for NASA on Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle as he claimed, and never earned a doctoral degree. Baker declined comment for the article, and apparently has not provided any extenuating evidence for himself in the five years since, so it seems the allegations are confirmed, sadly. A lesson for all not to lie on one's resumé.
 
Owens Z said:
The link would not allow me access, but I found your referred article "Space editor [David Baker] quits over fraud claims" on page 11 of the May 2021 issue of Physics World in my local public library. Baker resigned on 25 March 2021 as editor of the journal SpaceFlight after "allegations" that he hadn't worked for NASA on Gemini, Apollo, and Space Shuttle as he claimed, and
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I had lunch with Baker in February 2016 and he told me a fantastic story about his early work in the space program. It did not involve Gemini or Apollo. A few years later he called me and told me another really interesting story. I now believe those stories to be fabrications. I concluded that he had invented many stories about himself. It is clear he never had a Ph.D. It's not that hard to prove if you do have one. (If you want to know about mine, you can contact my alma mater. They provide that information for employee references and background checks.) Over many years he has written many articles and books. You can judge the quality of them for yourself and consider whether his personal fabrications are relevant to the quality of his publications.
 
Just got notice from USNI Press that this has shipped. If you have their other books in this series you can envision the overall layout and content.

My impression is that these titles are tied to museums so that they can sell them in museum gift shops. The museum ships have more books about them for that reason. I wish some of the other Essex-class carriers would get better coverage, but I also wish that horses could fly.


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Looking foward to this "

Edit: This author has previously written a 3 volume history of the Israeli Air Force so this book would be Volume 4 for all intents and purposes.

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Dagger said:
Hawker's Secret Projects, Cold War Aircraft That Never Flew. By Christopher Budgen, expected November 2023.
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Arjen said:
Pen and Sword. Search engine https://www.startpage.com in two seconds flat
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overscan (PaulMM) said:
Oooh nice! [Budgen is] managing the archive at Brooklands, so this will be based on the archival materials there.
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hesham said:
A good surprise of course,but I hope it sheds light on Hawker Type 1000 series,
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CJGibson said:
Nice! I hope the Star Destroyer is in it. Hopefully be a Telford.
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After his well-received 2023 volume Hawker's Secret Projects: Cold War Aircraft That Never Flew, Christopher Budgen has a new book Hawker's Naval Fighters: Camel to Sea Harrier to be published imminently. Sounds a bit short to do justice to the expansive subject, but let's see. The page is < https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Hawkers-Naval-Fighters/p/58520 >.
 

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