(Hardback)

In 1945 the Allies returned home with information from German research concerning jet engines and swept wings. Though the USAAF had already deployed a batch of jet fighters, Lockheed P-80 Shooting Stars, to Italy in 1945, their centrifugal-flow engines had limited scope for development compared with the axial-flow engines used by the Germans.

(Hardback)

The world of experimental and prototype aircraft throws up many interesting and unusual machines, and the aircraft manufacturers of the USA were no exception. Within a few years of the Wright Brothers' first flight in 1903, World War One greatly accelerated the development of aircraft as the fighting machines.