F-104 Starfighter by Reed, Arthur - 1981

E-210: Charles Scribner's Sons. Very Good. 1981. Hardcover. Hardcover. 8vo. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1981. 112 pgs. Illustrated throughout. DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities. Bound in cloth boards with titles present to the spine. Boards have light shelf-wear present to the extremities. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. The F-104 Starfighter has rightly been described as one of the most controversial aircraft in history. To the Americans it was, as its appearance proclaims, ‘a missile with a man in it’. It was undoubtedly a hot and unforgiving aircraft as the pilots of many NATO and other Western world air forces were to discover. Nonetheless, handling it was well within the capability of the frontline pilot who had mastered the earlier generations of jet fighters but to those who hadn’t had experience with earlier jets, either in the air or on the ground—the newly revived Luftwaffe for example—the F104G which the Germans had bought with such enthusiasm and built under license in vast numbers, became a national scandal and very nearly a national disaster. E-210; 9.1 X 6.6 X 1.1 inches; 112 pages .