United States Military Aircraft since 1909 (published 1963)

The history of military flying in the United States now extends over more than half a century. In that period, an enormous variety of aircraft types has entered service with the U.S. Air Force and its antecedent organizations, the Signal Corps, the Army Air Corps and the Army Air Force.

These military aircraft range from examples of the Wright Brothers’ biplane - closely related to the machine in which Orville Wright made the world’s first successful powered, controlled, sustained flight - to the supersonic, missile-armed, jet-powered swept-wing fighters and bombers of the present day. The intervening years have seen the U.S. air forces engaged in three major conflicts - World War I of 1914-1918, World War II of 1939-1945 and the Korean War of 1950-1953. Each of these wars had a lasting impact on the equipment of the air forces, both in the large-scale production of aircraft required at short notice and in the long-term development of newer types to meet ever-changing concepts of the tactical and strategic value of air power.

An attempt to chronicle, between the covers of a single volume, the history of all these many types of aircraft might at first seem doomed to fail. Nevertheless, this seemed to be a worthwhile project, since it would represent a unique record, obtainable in no other only source, of the technological achievements of fifty-odd years, and the operational successes which they made possible.

To provide this record, it has proved necessary to describe and illustrate over 300 several types of aircraft, many of which existed in a multitude of variants. This total is made up only of those aircraft which have been operational with the U.S. air forces. Purely experimental types and prototypes have been excluded from the present survey. This somewhat arbitrary division was essential to keep the size of the volume down to manageable proportions, but every effort has been made to include, rather than exclude the marginal types, such as those evaluated in size-able quantities but not eventually put into production. Also included are certain prototypes such as the XB-43 and XC-35 which represented significant engineering "firsts".

Three appendices illustrate, respectively, the aircraft procured prior to 1917 (when the U.S. entered World War I), the less-important U.S.-built types procured from 1917 to date, and types of foreign manufacture which have gone into service with the air forces.

To help readers of this work to obtain maximum value from the information it contains, there is a chapter on the designation systems used for Army and Air Force aircraft to date. Another chapter deals with aircraft markings, knowledge of which enhances the interest in the more than 500 illustrations in this volume. A brief history of military aviation in the U.S. is also included.

Contents of the book

• Foreword (vii)
• Preface (ix)
• Introductory Note (xi)
• History of U.S. Air Force (1)
• Aircraft Procurement and Disposal (5)
• Aircraft Designation System (8)
• Aircraft Markings and Colour Schemes (23)
• Aircraft Descriptions (31)
• Appendix A – Pre-1917 Aircraft (466)
• Appendix B – Lesser Types, 1917 to Date (480)
• Appendix C – Foreign-Build Aircraft (537)
• Designation Index (565)
• General Index (586)