John Stanaway

P38 lighting Aces 1942-1943 by John Stanaway. The most beautiful conventional aircraft of WWII. The only similarly configured aircraft was the German Focke-Wulf Fw 189 a reconnaissance airplane. The Lighting was one of the few aircraft to see action in all the theaters of operation. Stanaway’s book concentrates on the men who flew it into combat and downed 5 or more enemy aircraft in air to air combat were thus known as an ace. While the premise of the book sounds fascinating, Stanaway does a poor job of executing it. The book reads like a poorly written history text, dry and without passion, What should be exciting air to air duels is rendered as dull as white bread. Stanaway does not include pictures of enemy aircraft nor does he include diagrams of the battles. Color diagrams and pictures of the enemy aircraft would greatly improve the readability of the narrative. The books 6 chapters cover in a brief fashion the development of the Lightning, its performance in various theaters of operation it fought in, and an appendices covering the names of the pilots,and a history of the particular aircraft flown.The book is only 90 pages and should be read with supplemental information from Wikipedia.… (more)