Book Review

Sooner or later

By Dave English

“If you’re going to go to the Moon, sooner or later you’ve got to go to the Moon.” Flight Director Glynn Linney, summing up the rationale for the Apollo 8 ‘go’ decision, NASA meetings, 1968. Quoted in the 2019 book Shoot for the Moon. This was a huge decision, a quantum step from Earth orbit flights.  Apollo 8 was the first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth’s gravitational sphere of influence going out into deep space, and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times without landing and then returned to Earth. The three astronauts were the first humans to see and photograph … Continue reading Sooner or later

Nerves of Steel book review

By Dave English

Remember the Southwest 737 that had an engine explode in cruise and a passenger die? The incident was much worse than we might have first guessed, much worse than a simple engine failure at altitude in the simulator. And turns out the captain has a wild backstory more interesting than most airline pilots. This new autobiography has all the details, and it’s a surprisingly great aviation read. When Tammie Jo Shults was growing up, girls didn’t become pilots. The inside story of what it was really like to be a woman in US military flight training during the ’80s is … Continue reading Nerves of Steel book review

Officer’s Aide Memoire

By Dave English

During WWII, the Royal Navy expanded at a great clip, which required staffing hundreds of ships with new officers. The shore training camp that turned civilians into Royal Navy officers was HMS King Alfred, in Hove, Sussex. It was commanded by one Captain John Noel Pelly, who was recalled from retirement at the start of the war. A few years later, in September 1943, he wrote a short book titled Officer’s Aide Memoire that distilled hundreds of years of sea-going knowledge from the Royal Navy into words. It was widely read among the over twenty-two thousand naval officers that eventually … Continue reading Officer’s Aide Memoire

The problem with pilots

By Dave English

Finished reading an amazing book that was published last year— The Problem with Pilots: How Physicians, Engineers, and Airpower Enthusiasts Redefined Flight, by former USAF U2 instructor pilot and dean of their school of Advanced Air and Space Studies, Colonel Timothy P. Schultz, PhD. It covers the history of automation in aircraft, the replacement and extension of piloting skills into faster, higher, more precise aerial machines. It’s a must-read for people interested in aviation history, human factors engineering, or understanding the history of automated flying. Full of original research, fully referenced, deeply academic yet written in easy flowing English. And … Continue reading The problem with pilots

A new TOPGUN book

By Dave English

I was lucky enough to receive an advance promotional copy of a new book: TOPGUN: An American Story, written by Dan Pedersen, founder of the famed US Navy Fighter Weapons School. It’s a good read. Written with the smooth wisdom of an eighty-three-year-old, who is proud of Navy aviation and his dog-fighting days, but isn’t just writing for wide-eyed and hair-on-fire teenagers dreaming of Mach 2. Now, understand this is an autobiography of a full navy career, not really a standalone history of the Topgun (and word to the wise, that’s one word, not two like the movie) fighter weapons … Continue reading A new TOPGUN book