Bob Kowalski

If there is one thing I love as a reading topic it's an esoteric military aircraft, and they don't come much more esoteric than this; one of the also-rans in the program that produced the classic Douglas Skyraider. Curtiss-Wright had been one of the stalwart companies serving the U.S. military, but this plane is a testament to the organization arteriosclerosis that afflicted the firm, in that while it was an improvement on the Curtiss Helldiver, it wasn't enough of an improvement to get excited about, and may have even been a retrogression in terms of handling as compared to the late-production SB2C machines. Not for everyone, but well worth it if you care about the subject of U.S. warplanes.… (meer)

Aside from the authors two previous works (Naval Fighters Twenty-Four, and Tailhook Magazine in 1981) and the mid-70’s article on the AM-1 by Walt Boyne and Hal Andrews in the long defunct Air Power magazine there has been dearth of items published on the AM-1. Please note that Amazon lists 152 pages. My copy numbers 153 pages using the inside rear cover to list incidents between May ’51 and June ’52.
This volume again follows the normal Naval Fighters layout and doesn’t cover any really new territory that’s going to send historians scrambling there are a few rare things of interest such as the counter-rotating propeller installation and a Martin brochure drawing of a COD variant called the Mercury on page 15. The AM-1Q is also fleshed out with numerous pictures illustrating the operator’s station and two contemporary cut away illustrations of both the AM-1 and AM-1Q on pages 44 and 45.
Two pages are dedicated to the AM-1 competitors with the winning AD-1 Skyraider getting one page to itself. The brief paragraphs for the also-rans are fairly informative in spite of their brevity.
The unit histories are a bit more fleshed out than is typical for a Naval Fighters publication with several offing a pilot’s recollection of the flying traits of the AM-1 and few also being to provide a first hand, knowledgeable comparison between the AM-1 and the AD-1.
If you’re looking for color, you’ll be disappointed. But overall? This is undoubtedly the best comprehensive soup to nuts history of the AM-1 available. It’s well illustrated, and the unit histories cover the aircraft very well. Development itself gets short-shrift at about maybe two pages total, but it’s well written and the other chapters, technical illustrations, drawings and photographs make up for that shortcoming.

As the last word on the AM-1, this is indisputably a must have book for anyone interested in post war NavAir, dive bombers and modelers.… (meer)

Nice volume on an airplane no one remembers

Nice coverage of a now unknown aircraft. The author has done numerous volumes for Naval Fighters and they are all consistently superb.
This volume has a few issues that relate to the quality of the archival drawings that were available. The notes and lines were obliterated sometime in the past. (The author acknowledges the paucity of good information. Keep this in context while reading this volume.) A fair amount of coverage is given to the R4360/coaxial installation and the experimental wing. One thing that was interesting was how long the Navy keep the airplane under test.

This monograph provides some insight into the chaos the Navy was enduring as operational realities were conflicting with CAG composition and doctrine.
If your interests lean to the obscure and little known this a good purchase.… (meer)