Best aviation & nautical biographies according to redditors
We found 12 Reddit comments discussing the best aviation & nautical biographies. We ranked the 3 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 12 Reddit comments discussing the best aviation & nautical biographies. We ranked the 3 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Read the book 'Apache' by Ed Macy for real life stories of these kind of missions
And here's a book by one of the pilot that flew into the fort: https://www.amazon.com/Apache-Inside-Cockpit-Fighting-Machine/dp/0802144780
Personally, I think the best way to get a good understanding of modern US airpower is to work chronologically. Most people find WWII stuff boring, so I recommend starting with the Vietnam War, then moving to the First Gulf War, then the Kosovo War, then the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Falklands War is very interesting because it gives a British and naval perspective (both of which are lacking from my current list), however, the author of that book was pretty pissed at how every thing was handled during his time as a pilot (and a lot of it I agree with), so the book sometimes ends up feeling a little 'rant-y'.
If you're looking for an action filled book about rotorcraft, then look no further and pick up Ed Macy's Apache. Some of the missions described in that book are just too insane, but somehow, they pulled it off.
Read anything written by a pilot who flew strike missions (a good example is this), or an attack helicopter pilot (e.g. this), or simply read about modern air strikes a lot, and you'll find complaints about "a guy moved into the strike area, causing the mission to be cancelled," etc. This is also indicated by relatively recent tightenings of ROE, like this. The military is made up of people too, and they don't like killing people they shouldn't have, so they try to avoid it within acceptable limits. Tighter ROEs make it more hazardous to soldiers, as it imposes higher burdens before a shot can be made.
Another example that I'm more familiar with is how ROE changes killed a whole class of airplane: the interceptor. Interceptors are fast, high altitude aircraft designed to make over-the-horizon kills with radar only. This means that they can't do things like read roundels, and ROE now dictates that you get positive visual identification of targets before a shot may be made, making the interceptor obsolete.
ROE is very important in modern air operations, for the reason that it doesn't look good when you kill a lot of innocent people. People who didn't deserve to die dying is an inevitable side-effect of military force, and while the military tries their best to avoid it, it's simply impossible to prevent. Civilian casualties are always going to happen, and the best way to avoid them is to not involve the military, and use civilian police forces instead that can use local knowledge and make decisions more carefully and slowly instead. If you want stuff to explode, use the military, if you want a careful approach, use civil measures.
Wager with the Wind was a book I selected in school for a report and it was seriously awesome.
It's basically an early history of bush flying in Alaska with a lot of anecdotes. My parents knew or were friends-of-friends with some of the characters in the book so it was even more cool having met some of them.
There is another cool book about Army paratroopers in Alaska. Up here they perform civilian rescues so the book was a recollection of SAR adventures. I can't remember the title but I bought it in a Borders about 10 years ago.
Then of course there are the Alaskan Bear Tales books. I've never read them, but everyone I know who has started carrying guns when they let their dog out in the backyard.
Oh and another book I remember reading was called Jumping Fire about a smokejumper in Alaska.
Might I also recommend this one by the same author? (An even better book, imho.)
A bit broader still, going over to rotary-wing: this one and this other one both by a British Apache pilot in Afghanistan. Both good stuff, though if I had to pick one of the two here it would be the first.
But this one right here is considered the definitive military rotary-wing book, and I'd agree with that. Huey pilot in 'Nam.
Wager With the Wind, By James Greiner. This is the story of the bush pilot Don Sheldon.
Flight of Passage, By Rinker Buck. This is a good non-fiction about two brothers who fly a J-3 from coast to coast in the 60's.
I think this comes pretty close.
source
I'm a 19-year-old boy from Ottawa, Canada (you may have heard of our little country :P ). While I was not homeschooled per se during my public school years (I went to regular English schools), I definitely learned more quickly, more thoroughly and more widely due to my parents' constant efforts to teach me things that went way above and beyond what I was "learning" at my high school.
My parents are both high school teachers, and have each spent roughly 30 years teaching their respective subjects.
My dad actually just retired last year, but he taught most of the Social Studies curriculum during the course of his career (History, Philosophy, Psychology, World Religions, etc.). He is a bilingual Francophone from Ottawa, so he taught at one of the French Catholic high schools in our area. He also happens to be somewhat skeptical of religion (not an atheist, but damned close). Odd combination, yes, but it has resulted in him introducing me to
military history, everything from the Roman legions to the Knights Templar to the Taliban.
My mother was born in Ottawa, to Greek parents who had left Greece after the Second World War; my grandparents are from a village about 20 minutes away from the modern city of Sparti (Sparta). During the war, the village was at some point occupied by Axis forces (I'm not sure when or to what extent, because my grandparents' English is not great and only my mother speaks Greek).
I decided to include a list (below) of works that I've found particularly interesting (I've never actually written down a list of my favs before, so this may be somewhat... sprawling and will be in no particular order :P ). Depending on the ages of your kids, some of this stuff might be inappropriate for them right now, but they can always check it out when they're older. It's mostly military/wartime history that interests me (it's what I plan on studying in university), but I've learned so many little tidbits about other things as well from having access to these works. Since your kids are all boys, I hope they'll find at least some of this stuff to be interesting :) .
Books
Movies and TV
This is all non-fiction. If you like this list, let me know, and I can expand on it further, and also include my favourite works from other genres, as well as my favourite fiction books as well :) . I left out tons of stuff that I'm too much of a lazy teenager to type in here, lol.
Wie gesagt, ich bin weder Heeresflieger, noch Ingenieur, noch Physiker. Es kann gut sein das ich mich vertan habe.
Die Brechung beruht auf technischen Daten die ich für den Apache Helikopter in diesem Buch gefunden habe. Für den Tiger hab ich die nötigen Daten nirgends gefunden, hab aber auch nicht lange gesucht. Solltest du die Daten für die maximale Neigungsrate finden, dann kannst du die Rechnung ja selber nochmal durchführen. Da der Tiger ist ein modernerer Helikopter als der Apache ist habe ich einfach mal angenommen, dass die beiden in etwa vergleichbar sind.
5g zu erreichen ist kein Problem für einen Helikopter. Ich fliege Modell RC-Helikopter und kenne Renndrohnen Piloten. Meine Modell erreichen im Kurvenflug um die 3g, bei Renndrohnen sind 7g an der Tagesordnung. Auch echte Helikopter können diese Werte erreichen. Das passiert aber nicht so oft, da Helikopter selten den Kurvenflug mit den nötigen Geschwindigkeiten durchführen. Kampfjets widerstehen um die 20g. Man verbindet höhere G-Zahlen vor allem deswegen mit Jets, da diese, durch ihre großen Reisegeschwindigkeiten, sehr viel mehr g im Kurvenflug überstehen müssen. Drehflügelflugzeuge (also Hubschrauber) unterscheiden sich im Grunde von Fix-Wing-Flugzeugen nur dadurch, das ihre Tragflächen sich drehen und gleichzeitig für den Schub verantwortlich sind. Die Rotoren eines Helikopters leisten aber die selbe Funktion wie eine Tragfläche. Um den Helikopter zu neigen ist es nicht notwendig die Blattstellung umzukehren, aber ist technisch ohne Probleme möglich. Ein Rotorblatt hat währende der Rotation gyroskopische Eigenschaften, die Helikopter zur Fortbewegung ausnutzen. Wie genau das funktioniert kann und will ich nicht in Textform ausführen, da das den Rahmen sprengen würde. Ich kann dir aber diese Videoserie empfehlen. Hier wird die Funktion eines Rotorgyroskops sehr gut erklärt und dargestellt.
Austin County STAR Flight.
A good read by a former pilot: Life Inside Dead Man's Curve by Kevin McDonald.
Those who love to fly on helicopters I highly recommend to read the book from Edward Macy who was qualified to fly in both Apache seats: the gunner's front and the pilot's back.