Book Reviews

AERO-NEUROSIS

Pilots of the First World War and the Psychological Legacies of Combat

By Mark C Wilkins

Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Books, 47 Church Street, Barnsley, S Yorkshire S70 2AS, UK. 2019. x; 178pp. Illustrated. £19.99. ISBN 978-1-5267-312-3

Officers of No24 Squadron RAF in France, 29 November 1918. RAeS (NAL).

This is an interesting book but, as with all books written by historians, no matter how eloquent and factual, there is always the omission of the feeling of real experience. By that I mean there are people alive today with whom the author could have discussed and compared the past with the present. Those first pilots had to battle with their machines as well as the enemy. Today, the pilot is an integral part of the machine, the fatigue may have been produced in a different way but the end result is always the same.

That said, the book is a fascinating collection of narratives about the ‘Aces’ of the Great War and how that war took its toll in various ways on them, before most of them sadly perished.

One of the common denominators throughout is the effect of ‘fear’. This was not only generated by the constant concern about the integrity of the plane you were flying but the fear of not coming back. Those of us who have experienced ongoing day after day fear, know how draining and fatiguing it can be, even if nothing happens, except now and again. This type of fatigue is common in a number of walks of life even today and, unless it is managed by sympathetic and understanding people, it can have fatal results. The signs and symptoms do vary from person to person, as the author well describes.

The early cases were not well managed as they were not understood. There was always the concern that your fatigue would be interpreted as cowardice or lack of moral fibre and so these people soldiered on, getting more fatigued until they were so chronically fatigued some of them had to be stopped. The wise commander would see this but, as was often experienced in those telling times, the commander was as fatigued as the men he flew with, sometimes with tragic results.

There was always the concern that your fatigue would be interpreted as cowardice or lack of moral fibre and so these people soldiered on

What have we learnt from these early aviators and their problems? For a start, the machines today are far more reliable but, on crossing water for the first time, low level, the fear of something going wrong can trouble the most modern mind until landfall is made. For many of us it takes many hours for that fear to diminish but we now understand it, and can teach others about how to manage it. We try to manage combat flying hours into sensible manageable rotas but, when the pressure is on, and the manpower reduced, even the most well organised system can be fractured.

Those lessons from WW1 were applied in WW2 but ran into the same problems when the manpower was reduced, and the task load increased. This was very evident during the Battle of Britain. The one-to-one combat fear was just the same.

Today, we have a better selection system, hopefully preventing those of a weak disposition, from entering flying training. Modern air-to-air combatants rarely see their opponents’ aircraft, let alone the pilot, and the weapons systems are designed for total aircraft destruction. There is little time for fear, which is always there, as the pilot is too busy to dwell on their inner thoughts, as high G manoeuvres, twist and turns, fire-and-forget, take-up every moment of the pilot’s skill and ability to survive.

It is a book that each reader will form their own and probably differing opinion about the effects of flying combat missions, both then, and now.

Dr Ian Perry
FRAeS

ROCKETS AND MISSILES OF VANDENBERG AFB

By Joseph T Page II

Schiffer Publishing, 4880 Lower Valley Road, Atglen, PA 19310, USA. 2019. Distributed by Gazelle Book Services Ltd, White Cross Mills, Hightown, Lancaster LA1 4XS, UK. 192pp. Illustrated. £38.99. ISBN 978-0-7643-5679-7.

The space shuttle Enterprise moves towards the shuttle assembly building at Vandenberg AFB Space Launch Complex 6 aboard its specially-designed Cometto 76-wheel transporter in February 1985. In the background are the payload changeout room and the payload preparation room. USAF.This is an impressive work of reference. Starting with a brief history of the Vandenberg Air Force Base (AFB), it proceeds to describe, in alphabetical order, all launches of rockets and missiles from 1958 to 2016. It then catalogues chronological events of the AFB and lists each firing in chronological order.

Vandenberg AFB is located adjacent to the Pacific Coast in California, near Point Magu. It is the USAF’s test and evaluation for inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), sounding rockets, satellite launch rockets, ground-launched cruise missiles, interceptor missiles and other test vehicles. Vandenberg AFB also served as an operational base during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, although this fact is not explained in the brief history; the Minuteman section, which runs to over a fifth of the book’s content, covers the preparations and part the base played at that time.

Indeed, the Minuteman section spans an impressive 54 years of Vandenberg AFB’s history (to 2016). Of the 60-plus missile types covered, others I found interesting were the SCUD B and Thor. The SCUD B was fired twice in 2002 to characterise the missile’s signature in both day and night. The Royal Air Force trained on the Thor missile, the first ICBM fired at Vandenberg AFB in December 1958, at what was then called Cooke AFB (now part of Vandenberg AFB).

Each missile featured in the book has a brief history of the programme, a designation of purpose (ICBM, satellite-launch etc), a description of main components, and the firing history. The book describes how various missiles, Thor as an example, were developed beyond their usefulness as offensive assets, to be modified to become space launch vehicles, targets for interceptor missiles and for other purposes.

Indeed, the Minuteman section spans an impressive 54 years of Vandenberg AFB’s history

Throughout the book, there are many high-quality photographs and detailed line drawings but none (except on the inside covers) are full page, indicating this is a work primarily of reference to the detail, rather than a ‘coffee-table’ book. This book will primarily appeal to missile historians and has a special place in US archives as a complete non-classified record of firings from one of its bases.

Despite the comprehensive lists, glossary and bibliography, the book lacks an index, which makes locating information time-consuming. I found the alphabetical approach to covering the missiles slightly disorienting when reading the book sequentially; however, this method of reading is, perhaps, not how the author intended.

Tim Marshall
CEng FRAeS

HUMAN FACTORS IN AIRCRAFT MAINTENANCE

By Demetris Yiannakides and Charalampos Sergiou

CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742, USA. 2019. Distributed by Taylor & Francis Group, 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon OX14 4RN, UK. xix; 119pp. £66.99. [20% discount available to RAeS members via www.crcpress.com using AKQ07 promotion code]. ISBN 978-0-367-23011-1.

Stuart Bailey/British AirwaysThis book seems primarily written for EASA Part-66 students intending to become licensed engineers. Of the eight chapters, six directly align with sections of the EASA Part-66 Module 9 knowledge requirements. Chapter 5 combines sections 5, 6 and 9 of Module 9. The material is well written and incudes frequent references.

The book does suffer from adopting that structure, as it lacks a developing narrative to link the material and suffers from not having a strong concluding chapter. It does contain 13 accident/ incident case studies from 1979 to 2017. These are typically half a page long and are a missed opportunity to show how the learnings could have been applied to prevent these occurrences.

The publishers seem content to price this slim volume disappointingly high. The UK CAA CAP 715 ‘An Introduction to Aircraft Maintenance Engineering Human Factors for JAR 66’ contains broadly similar material in a similar length document. While it is a little dated, issued in 2002 before EASA Part-66, it is still a credible text. CAP715 is downloadable for free, as are many other resources that would allow a curious student to achieve Part-66 Level 2 ‘General Knowledge’ in HF through self-directed study.

This book is unlikely to be useful for Part-66 Module 9 instructors as the depth of material is insufficient to give the depth of understanding an instructor would need. This is odd because the authors do finish with a chapter that sets out their views on how Part-66 HF training can be better delivered. The authors advocate that the first three elements of Module 9 be taught in the classroom early on but the other six elements be addressed within practical engineering modules.

There is much to be said about moving HF learning from the classroom to the hangar floor. A book structured around illustrating that approach would be so much more valuable to instructors.

Andy Evans
CEng FRAeS

BLIND BOMBING

How Microwave Radar Brought the Allies to D-Day and Victory in World War II

By Norman Fine

Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE. 2019. Distributed by Casemate, The Old Music Hall, 106-108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK. xvi; 230pp. Illustrated. £20. ISBN 978-1-64012-220-8.

On the surface, the prospect of investing time in a 230-page book devoted to microwave radar, or more specifically, resonant cavity magnetrons (RCM), may not fill potential readers with much joy. From the outset, however, this book avoids the complex physics behind this most important of inventions and weaves together a narrative that blends politics, personalities and operations to tell its story.

This well-written and researched book provides some novel insights into the US contribution to the Combined Bomber Offensive

The major application of RCM technology during WW2 was concentrated on blind bombing and air-to-surface-vessel (ASV) radars; the former being the main focus of the book. After tipping his hat to the inventors of the RCM, Messrs John Randall and Harry Boot at the University of Birmingham, the author highlights how technology was used as a tool by Churchill to entice the US to form closer ties to the UK to help it in its war effort. In this case, through the 1940 Tizard mission to the US that disclosed Britain’s research into jet engines, guided weapons and the RCM, a version of the latter being given to the US.

The result was a twin-track development by the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) in the UK and the MIT Radiation Laboratory (Rad Lab) in the US. This was a largely co-operative relationship leading to the British H2S MkIII and American H2X, both operating at 3cm wavelengths.

Although the author highlights the opposition to H2X by many in the US Army Air Force, and acknowledges that visual bombing using the ‘expensive, elaborate, fraud’ that was the Norden bombsight was more accurate, H2X had one key advantage; it allowed bombing on the 80% of days when weather prevented the bombardier seeing the target and therefore made a significant contribution to the Combined Bomber Offensive.

This well-written and researched book provides some novel insights into the US contribution to the Combined Bomber Offensive.

Trevor Nash
MRAeS

Message from RAeS Library Additions New member spotlight Society news Cool Aeronautics Diary Obituary RAeS 2021 Medals & Awards Elections Have you successfully renewed your membership for 2021?