Chasing the Demon is not exactly what I expected from the title. I knew it was about the attempt to conquer the sound barrier and exceed speeds of Mach 1, but I did not expect the lion’s share of the book to be devoted to the events leading up to that particular event. The author explains why he did that in a satisfactory manner, but I am still slightly disappointed. Although I must admit, the history of aviation was really fascinating. I did not know that the Wright brothers were super greedy and held back the development of aviation in the United States. I mean, I knew that they did the first flight, but there are always those qualifiers. Flight requires four aspects to be considered legitimate. All of the previous attempts lacked one thing or another, but the Wright Brothers managed to control the plane and not be beholden to the wind or some other force.

In any case, this author can certainly write well. Dan Hampton writes with grace and aplomb. It helps a great deal that he is a former fighter pilot. Hampton is familiar with the material to be presented and delves into the aerodynamics to some extent. In that vein, he discusses the difficulties of engineering that early aviators met with. First off, they knew of the sound barrier and all civilizations that had whips broke it early on. The same goes for the progress of firearms. The history of that alone could fill a book and most likely already has. To return to airplanes though, in dives, the Sound Barrier was broken several times, but the key aspect is that it wasn’t really controlled. The airplane wasn’t engineered for those speeds properly and began to fall apart. The same thing goes with developing an engine capable of such thrust.

So as I mentioned, most of the book is devoted to the events that shaped the men who chased the demon; the aftermath of WWI, the Jazz Age, Radio Programs, the rise of Totalitarianism, the Great Depression and so on. Once World War II came around, these pilots were enlisted in the military, some of them even taking part in sorties during the Pearl Harbor attack. World War II came around and the military was eager for really fast airplanes. Initially, Hitler did not see the value in a supersonic fighter plane since his battles were going well. Eventually, it came to pass that it was too late to do anything on the German side. The Axis and Allies came to see that the tactical advantage of supersonic flight and it became something of a matter of secrecy and pride. I mean, now it is somewhat known that Chuck Yeager broke the Sound Barrier on October 14, 1947, but this is disputed in the book. The author argues that the first person to do this in a controlled fashion was George Welch, a man that was not in the military at the time.

Chasing the Demon contains a primer on Aerodynamics, a section showing a select bibliography, and a section for elaborating on the notes and an index. The book was entertaining enough, but I don’t really know if I can rate it higher than a four out of five. ( )

An easy read about a complex topic. Excellent research about the science of compressibility, the sound barrier; its discovery and evolution. Good minibios of the aviators, scientists, other flight enthusiasts that created many of the key innovations that stressed the piston engine and created the jet based world that currently exists. ( )

The author states at the forward that this book is written for the common person. He's right. The subtitle of this book, "A secret history of the quest for the sound barrier and the band of American aces who conquered it", is deceptive. Approximately 10% relates to that topic--the rest is superficial history of the 20th century. If you aren't an aviation buff, then maybe this is a good read. ( )

Subtitled as a “secret history” of the first officially documented supersonic flight, I found this to be a rather disjointed effort to describe the life and times of the generation of USAAF/USAF test pilots who lead the way into the post-WWII jet age. The problem is that even if one allows that the author is writing for a general audience that has no real knowledge of the history of aeronautics, World War II air warfare, or even the state of U.S society pre-1950, I just came away with a certain sense that this narrative was less than the sum of its parts.

Getting back to the notion that this book represents a secret history, what Hampton seems to be reacting against is some of the myth making that has attached to Chuck Yeager over the years and emphasizing that one of the reasons that Yeager got the honor is that he was seen as junior and, frankly, expendable; not to mention that men with better technological credentials were seen as having more important work to do rather than complete a project that the Air Force saw as a wasting asset in terms of publicity and technological development. To put it another way the responsible leadership realized that the X-1 could easily be put in the shade by the F-86 Saber and this was not going to be allowed to happen.

When I note that this book underwhelmed me this is not to cast aspersions on Hampton’s writing as I’d be happy to look at his other works. I do suspect that access to Ken Chilstrom, Yeager’s superior officer at the time of the historic flight gave him the sense of opportunities that really weren’t there. I also suspect that the man Hampton really wanted to write about was George Wagner, one of the few fighter pilots to get off the ground during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and lead test pilot for the F-86, who died during the testing of the North American F-100. The problem there is that Wagner was something of an enigma even to the men who remembered and admired him. ( )