American Eagles: A History of the United States Air Force Featuring the Collection of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force

by Daniel Patterson (Photographer)

Featuring the collection of airplanes, art, photographs, and memorabilia of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, this magnificently illustrated book tells the story of the beginnings of flight, through the creation of the U.S. Air Force as a separate branch of the military, to the unbelievable technological achievements of what is the preeminent air power in the world today. Here are combat aces, Medal of Honor recipients, crusty generals, and average citizens who served in the Air Force. There are philosophers, airplane designers, test pilots, rocket scientists, armorers, and grease monkeys. More than 250 color and 150 black-and-white illustrations and photos and insightful text present the story of the U.S. Air Force of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, published on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United States Air Force and the one hundredth anniversary of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force..

332 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 7, 2024

Reviews

[Betsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is partially narrative, but mostly great photos of planes that served with the USAAF/USAF. If you like planes, you will learn even more about the planes that helped the US to catch up with the rest of the world by WWII when our survival and that of our allies depended so much on airpower. There is also material on post-war conflicts, including Vietnam where even the awesome might of 'Rolling Thunder' couldn't pull it out. Needless to say, many airmen 'blamed' others for tying them down their efforts, but it was a different type of war.

Now that that the USA is 'at war' again, the USAF will be able to show its prowess once more. Let's hope it's not just in the form of those 8 caskets that returned recently.

[John Haworth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked up during a visit to the museum. Provides good insights into many of the pieces on exhibit and how these intertwine with founding of the USAF. Many of the images are wonderful, much higher quality than a visitor could take. A perfect takeaway after a visit. However, there are a few photographs that require improvement and a number of typographical errors in the edition I read, that knocked one star from my rating.

[Roger Ford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good information, but poorly edited.

I don’t know whether it was due to multiple human errors or to some formatting software, but the book was full of unfortunate errors: misspellings, garbled text, misplace comments for the photos. As an example, on the very first page (or maybe the cover) the important tag line was misspelled, “Futher, Faster, Higher.” I found the numerous errors to be distracting to an otherwise useful text.