Air Disaster, Vol. 1

By Macarthur Job

Book Overview

This work concentrates on the landmark propliner accidents of the 1950s and 1960s. It takes the readers back to the piston engined and early turboprop days when air transport was evolving into the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1875671110
• ISBN13: 9781875671113
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Motorbooks Intl
• Length: 183 Pages
• Weight: 1.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.0" x 0.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Riveting From Start To Finish! -- 10 Stars!! --

What an excellent book this is. For that matter, all of the Air Disaster volumes by Macarthur Job are first-rate. It's hard to imagine cramming any more detail into each chapter than is provided here! And the illustrations are top drawer as well. Some of these drawings are actually quite eerie, giving the reader a look at what the accident must have actually looked like. These sketches, like the text, are very detailed as well. If you are fascinated with plane crashes and "what really happened", you must purchase this (and all subsequent) volumes. Volume 1 of this series of books includes 18 riveting true-life tales of disaster aboard a wide variety of commercial aircraft -- from the series of BOAC "Comet" crashes in 1954, to a Swissair "Caravelle" in September 1963, to a Capitol Airways DC-8 in November 1970, to a BEA "Trident" in June 1972, to a Turkish McDonnell Douglas DC-10 in March 1974, and lots more. My two favorite chapters from this volume are ............. >> Chapter #12 -- The crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 401 in Miami, Florida, on the night of December 29, 1972. That's the famous accident which had a Lockheed L-1011 plunging into the Everglades because a cheap landing-gear light failed to illuminate, causing the crew of the TriStar much grief and, ultimately, caused the aircraft to crash into the pitch-black Everglades near Miami International Airport. This is also the fatal crash that spawned the book and movie, "The Ghost Of Flight 401". <br /> <br />>> Chapter #18 -- Chronicling in fascinatingly-microscopic detail the single worst disaster in commercial aviation history (to date), claiming 583 lives: the March 27, 1977, accident in Tenerife (Canary Islands), when two Boeing 747 Jumbo Jets collided on the ground in heavy fog. The many photos, graphs, and charts (along with the practically minute-by-minute text account) do a nice job of placing the reader RIGHT THERE in Tenerife before, during, and after the accident. A chapter worth multiple re-reads. <br /> <br />A "Did You Know?" aviation trivia fact ........................ <br /> <br />Did You Know .... that the Pan Am Boeing 747 involved in the horrific crash at Tenerife in 1977 was the same identical airplane that had the distinction of being the very first Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet to operate a flight in commercial service? The aircraft, registered as "N736PA", was the 11th B747 ever built, first taking to the skies on its first test flight on Christmas Eve 1969. Less than one month later, the big jet was placed into revenue service with Pan American Airways, becoming the first 747 to transport paying passengers when it flew from New York to London on January 22, 1970. Seven years later it met its fate when a fellow 747 of KLM collided with her on a foggy runway in the Canary Islands. <br /> <br /> <br />The later "Air Disaster" editions, like this first one, are literally jam-packed with unbelievably-detailed info on many major airliner crashes. These "Air Disaster" vol

Understanding 1

Macarther Job introduces us to a format of explaining and understanding air distasters par excellence.If you are looking for gratuitous pictures you will be dissapointed. This is a book for those who wish to understand the reasons behind these incidents and the results of.Job takes us to the start of jet travel and the De Havilland Comet disasters of the 1950s when the UK nearly had the world's jet travel for the taking. Pilot error is also included as human factors in this then new tecnology also played it's part. This would be in evidence when the greatest disaster of all is covered by Job, the KLM/Pan Am disaster in Teneriff.The Douglas DC10 makes it's appearance and through Job explains that it is not the aircraft's fault for it's failings but man's failing to understand the technology that has been provided at the time. We all learn from our mistakes and sometimes the lessons needed over-awe us in their consequences.

An amazing wealth of detail

The entire series is a fairly easy read, and introduces the inexperienced to some of the identified causes of well-known - or in the case of this volume, some not-so-well-known - accidents. These books give a wonderfully even-handed, unbiased review of accidents, using all the evidence available. The stories are then woven with narrative, with actual dialogue where available, that really brings to life how things go wrong and how professional most airline staff are.If you find what the NTSB does fascinating, are interested in aerospace, mechanical or structural engineering, these books are required reading. But they're also great for the rest of us, who just want to know more about what goes wrong sometimes.

WELL worth the money!

I've read all three Air Disaster books, and in my opinion, this is the best one. With all of these books, the authors only include crashes that were caused by true accidents or "mistakes" made by people in the air industry; they do not include disasters based on terrorism or deliberate sabotage attempts.In my opinion, the most tragic accidents are the ones outlined in chapters 3, 8, 9, 12, 15, 17 and 18. In chapter 8, you witness how a DC9 ran out of fuel and was forced to ditch into the sea - despite having the required fuel to the destination, enough fuel to get to the alternate airport, as well as 30 minutes holding fuel, plus an extra 10%. Extraordinary!Chapter 12 tells of a flight crew that were so preoccupied with one of the three landing lights not lighting up (for the undercarriage) that none of them noticed that they had bumped the control-column and inadvertantly disengaged the autopilot. The plane crashed, killing over half on board, although afterwards it was discovered that the fimalment of the offending light bulb had simply burnt out and the landing gear was indeed in the down and locked position. One of the most Catastrophic disasters, was when everyone aboard the Turkish Airline 767 lost their life because a cargo door fell off. In a rare description of the aftermath, another pilot reported on the scene, "There were fragments of bodies and pieces of flesh everywhere that were hardly recognisable. Not far from where I stood were two hands clasping each other, a man's hand tightly holding a woman's hand, two hands that withstood disintegration..."Finally, the last chapter tells the horrific yet mesmerising story behind the events of the worlds biggest Air Disaster at Tenerife in 1977 involving two 747's (PanAm. and KLM). Ironically, this occurred while both aircraft were still on the ground. I won't go into the details, because it is just waaay to complex (ultimately it was caused by perhaps ten or so "incidents" - and if the outcome had have been different for any one of them, the whole thing would have been averted). Let's just say that the series of events that lead to the tragedy is just astonishing. In reality, it is always a string of highly improbable events that leads to a catastrophe of this magnitude. Ultimately, the death toll rose to 583 - to this day it remains the worst accidental disaster involving one or more aircraft.Unlikely as it may seem, this book has made me realise how safe air travel is - what I mean is that now I can at least understand how the accidents happened, and therefore how unlikely they are to occur.

An excellent look at some major accidents

I found this book very easy to read. Each accident was covered with great detail. The use of drawings to show the accident as it occured left little to the imagination. The written accounts were very accurate. I compared one accident covered in the book with the actual NTSB report and found them to be almost identical. The only difference is this book is easier to read than the NTSB report. If you are interested in aviation accidents, this book (and volume 2) is for you. It's about as close as you want to come to being in an Air Disaster!!!