Vought F-8 Crusader

Development of the Navy’s First Supersonic Jet Fighter

By William D. Spidle
Specialty Press, 2017. 226 pages. $44.95.

http://cowmanauction.com/admin/controller/extension/extension/alfacgiapi Vought F-8 Crusader is the first book by a blogger/researcher with respectable credentials, William D. Spidle. With 40 years in aviation as a licensed A&P mechanic and manager, he is a past president and editor of the F-4 Phantom Society. As he also worked for Vought, he has a vested interest in their aircraft. His blog, http://voughtworks.blogspot.com/, and now this book, represents some of his research with the Vought Aircraft Heritage Foundation (voughtheritage@vought.org) archives.

bloodthirstily The book’s narrative, significantly, follows its subhead: Development of the Navy’s First Supersonic Jet Fighter. With the operative word being “development,” it traces the aircraft’s history beginning with a gleam in the eye of Chance Vought Aircraft’s general manager Fredrick Detweiler to convince the Navy that there was “no substitute for the highest possible performance” in their next aircraft. There was no reason a carrier-based aircraft had to play second fiddle to land-based fighters.

The path to parity—and even superiority—is thoroughly and comprehensively described, as are the waypoints of record setting flights. What the reader will not find are squadron histories, operational deployments, and combat actions. Those are deviations from the book’s purpose. And, while there are many well-researched and well-written books readily available on those accounts, nothing out there at this point rivals the documentation and focus of this book.

A quick look at any book’s notes and bibliography is a valid basic guide to evaluating a book’s content. Both are very good indicators of the veracity and depth of the text. If Wiki and the web show up, the author did nothing to advance his research and, more importantly, the reader’s knowledge. While there is no bibliography in this book—a possible clue that secondary sources; i.e., books written by others about the topic, were not a significant factor in this work—every source cited in the end notes is primary, be it a company program plan, report, investigation, or personal letter. What these reveal to the reader are the rationales behind the methodology and decision making for the Crusader. It doesn’t get much more authentic than this.

Supporting all this are drawings, photographs, charts, facts, and figures that define virtually every step from preliminary discussions to the premier fighter aircraft the Crusader became. These include pre-project and “paper”—what-if—projects, development of its variable-incidence wing, its rocket pack, and significant coverage of mock-up and tooling and “coking”—application of the Richard Whitcomb’s “area rule” principle for trans-sonic drag reduction in form of fuselage shaping reminiscent of the trademarked Coca-Cola bottle.

All these points address why we read books—we seek to learn what we do not know. And the author has provided that information in spades. SpecialtyPress addresses the how we read books.

I have written about the press’s “typical” 10-inch-square-format, approximately 200-page, glossy white paper aero books. And I reiterate and quote myself: “typical” is not condescending; here, it means quality and expectation—many high quality, often large, well-reproduced photographs, and crisp, clean reproduction with graphics that ease the reader through the text. How we read this book is a joy.

And again, I am happy to see that Mike Machat is the book’s editor. His presence buttresses the book with an imprimatur of accuracy, authenticity, and readability. SpecialtyPress has done themselves—and us, as readers—a very great service.

This is a very good book. It addresses a well-known and well-documented aircraft from a unique viewpoint, thus advancing the literature of the Vought F-8 Crusader. If you have a number of F-8 books in your collection, without this one, you will be “out of fighters.”