Roskam's Airplane War Stories

by Jan Roskam

Roskam's Airplane War Stories, An Account of the Professional Life and Work of Dr. Jan Roskam, Airplane Designer and Teacher, represents an overview of Dr. Jan Roskam's life experiences as an airplane designer, a teacher and a sometimes pilot. The majority of these stories are based on actual events that happened in the design and development of aircraft programs, many of which (but not all) he was associated with.Students have always enjoyed hearing Dr. Jan Roskam tell these great airplane stories that have not-so-great endings. By popular demand, Dr. Roskam has compiled these fascinating tales into the recently released book, "Roskam's Airplane War Stories".These "war stories" became Dr. Roskam's professional autobiography. He has recorded these along with personal memories and observations from various aircraft 24 which made it into flight and 12 that never got beyond the drawing board. He also had the opportunity to pilot 38 different types of airplanes • Many pictures of these airplanes are included at the end of each chapter.During Jan Roskam's regular classes, as well as during his short courses, he illustrates the material with a large number of what he calls "war stories". Most of these stories directly involve certain airplanes.

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 2002

Reviews

[Anood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book felt like reading the biography of Dr. Roskam as I got to follow him from his high school years during the second world war up until the creation of his own company and the early 2000s. It was very enlightening seeing how he became one of the best aircraft designers and professors and I quite enjoyed his short Lessons that are mentioned throughout the book with each war story, favorite ones are:

- Murphy's Law: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
- Sometimes considerations such as simplicity and low weight win out.
- You can make anything fly, provided that there is enough power behind it and you know how to control it.
- Do not yield to the temptation to become a specialist.

[Ghadeer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it. I particularly enjoyed the lessons he includes after every story, it really taught me that airplane design is very tricky as you should always critically question design decisions and allow for design redundancy to eliminate accidents. We should keep asking "what if" to increase airworthiness and safety, and imagine scenarios where something fails. This book offers a unique insight on what most airplane designers go through on frequent basis and the diverse challenges that they face.