I'm not a collector but have a nice assortment of books on WWII aircraft. William Green wrote great books on WWII aircraft, with his book "Warplanes of the Third Reich" being his ultimate work. He wrote others and they are getting hard to come by in good condition. I was in my favorite aircraft books store last week and came across these volumes, all first editions, in new condition. The owner had them in his personal collection and decided to sell them. He priced each of them back in the late '80s for $12.95 each and sold them to me for those amounts. Other than a little shelf wear on the dust jackets, which have since been covered in Brodards, they are in new condition. These are great books with lots of information on major fighter and bomber types and sub-types used in WWII.

My 11 year old is obsessed with WW2 planes. His room is plane posters, he has all kinds of books, he has seen every episode of Dogfights on Discovery, etc. His favorite toys are matchbox WW2 planes and an aircraft carrier i found at a resale shop. He can tell you what planes had what engines, who had higher altitudes, etc.

Instead of Disney he wanted to go to the Air Force museum in Dayton, he loved it

Very nice! I've always had a thing for WW2 aircraft, built a zillion Monogram and Revell scale models back in the '80s. Monogram-brand WW2 models often included an insert featuring a diorama of that particular model - I thought those were great.

I remember reading them as a kid, and own some of those books even now.

Yeah, they have some age. They were printed in Great Britain in 1957. Everything is in black and white, including the three-views.

William Green was one of the first post-WWII authors that left nationalist hyperbole aside and just wrote facts and included obscur detail in his summaries of aircraft. And included some of the first detailed three-view drawing to aircraft.

I've loved airplanes and anything that flew since I was a boy. I flew a lot when I was younger, and was blessed to fly a lot of cool airplanes, including some WW II and vintage planes.

I remember thumbing through a couple of the Famous Planes series many years ago...NICE find!

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
My 11 year old is obsessed with WW2 planes. His room is plane posters, he has all kinds of books, he has seen every episode of Dogfights on Discovery, etc. His favorite toys are matchbox WW2 planes and an aircraft carrier i found at a resale shop. He can tell you what planes had what engines, who had higher altitudes, etc.

Instead of Disney he wanted to go to the Air Force museum in Dayton, he loved it

I just think that is so cool! You don't find many kids today that are interested enough in vintage aviation and certainly not enough to actually learn the aircraft specs. Bravo!

Awesome books. I love researching WW2 aircraft. I try to leave the politics out of it and just love the engineering that went into building those beautiful machines.

There's an upcoming auction @ cottone auctions on military and civil war stuff. One example-

https://www.cottoneauctions.co...or-and-other-goggles

Here's a good site if your into WW2 aircraft. www.ww2aircraft.net

EXCELLENT find! I'm officially envious.

Thanks to my father and uncles, I was hooked on WWII history from an early age. I knew what an Me-109 or P-47 was before I could ride a bike. My dad and I for a time worked on WWII-era model aircraft and I was fascinated by Luftwaffe camouflage. William Green did some excellent research as others have noted in his books.

I like WW II aircraft books too. My favorites are Adolf Galland's book, "The First and the Last", and Chuck Yeager's autobiography.

Love WW2 aircraft, grew up with family members and family friends in WW2 US Army Air Corps.

Step father served in both the RAF and US service.

The stories I remember are astounding.

I had some of those books growing up.

I love WW2 aircraft but I always research the P47, JU-87G, FW190, BF109 and the B-26.

I am starting to study Russian ground attack aircraft.

Very neat. I’m not familiar with these books

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Originally posted by pbramlett:
Very neat. I’m not familiar with these books

They're written in typical Green fashion. Just very factual. He fits an impressive amount of information in a few pages. Dedicates about 12 or so pages to each aircraft profiled. He includes a 3-view plate, profiles of each type and sub-type, and some performance data on the most common types. Here's a few pages on the Grumman F4F Wildcat.

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
My 11 year old is obsessed with WW2 planes. His room is plane posters, he has all kinds of books, he has seen every episode of Dogfights on Discovery, etc. His favorite toys are matchbox WW2 planes and an aircraft carrier i found at a resale shop. He can tell you what planes had what engines, who had higher altitudes, etc.

Instead of Disney he wanted to go to the Air Force museum in Dayton, he loved it

You should get your Son several 1:18 scale model planes and hang them from the ceiling. He'll love them !

https://imgur.com/UkWg3dW

quote:

Originally posted by Micropterus:

quote:

Originally posted by pbramlett:
Very neat. I’m not familiar with these books

They're written in typical Green fashion. Just very factual. He fits an impressive amount of information in a few pages. Dedicates about 12 or so pages to each aircraft profiled. He includes a 3-view plate, profiles of each type and sub-type, and some performance data on the most common types. Here's a few pages on the Grumman F4F Wildcat.

Thanks for that! I found some on that auction site I’m gonna bid on.

There are second editions that combine both fighter books into one book, and both bomber books into one book. They are still available on Amazon and go for about $45 per book.

By the way, if you enjoy studying aircraft performance in depth, this wedsite has tons of original reports and data sheets on aircraft:

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org

Stuff like this:

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/f4f/f4f-4.pdf

quote:

Originally posted by Lord Vaalic:
My 11 year old is obsessed with WW2 planes...

If he is ready for a pocket knife Swiss Army makes a Warhawk version.

The are several different models here is a link to the Tinkerer.

http://www.dlttrading.com/swiss-army-tinker-warhawk