With close technical analysis from Bill Gunston and artist Mike Badrocke's meticulous cutaway drawings, presented to the best effect on fold-out pages, this volume tells the full story of the most innovative aircraft company in the world.

Treasure trove of cutaway views of 1940s aircraft features magazine art that focuses on American models. The extensive notes and explanations also include details on select British and German planes.

This classic history of America's high-stakes quest to dominate the skies is "a gripping technothriller in which the technology is real" (New York Times Book Review). From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, Skunk Works is the true story of America's most secret and successful aerospace operation. As recounted by Ben Rich, the operation's brilliant boss for nearly two decades, the chronicle of Lockheed's legendary Skunk Works is a drama of Cold War confrontations and Gulf War air combat, of extraordinary feats of engineering and human achievement against fantastic odds. Here are up-close portraits of the maverick band of scientists and engineers who made the Skunk Works so renowned. Filled with telling personal anecdotes and high adventure, with narratives from the CIA and from Air Force pilots who flew the many classified, risky missions, this book is a riveting portrait of the most spectacular aviation triumphs of the twentieth century. "Thoroughly engrossing." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

Explores the many factors that led Lockheed from near bankruptcy in the 1930s to become one of the most successful and innovative aerospace corporations in the world

This illustrated history “recounts the unusual and sometimes dramatic development and operational career of one of the twentieth century’s most iconic airliners” (Aviation History Magazine). Clarence “Kelly” Johnson’s design for the Lockheed Constellation, known affectionately as the Connie, produced one of the world’s most iconic airliners. Lockheed had been working on the L-044 Excalibur, a four-engine, pressurized airliner, since 1937. In 1939, Trans World Airlines, at the instigation of major stockholder Howard Hughes, requested a forty-passenger transcontinental aircraft with a range of 3,500 miles, well beyond the capabilities of the Excalibur design. TWA’s requirements led to the L-049 Constellation, designed by Lockheed engineers including Kelly Johnson and Hall Hibbard. Between 1943 and 1958, Lockheed built 856 Constellations in numerous models at its Burbank, California, factory—all with the same distinctive and immediately recognizable triple-tail design and dolphin-shaped fuselage. The Constellation was used as a civil airliner and as a military and civilian air transport, seeing service in the Berlin and the Biafran airlifts. Three of them served as the presidential aircraft for Dwight D. Eisenhower. After World War II, TWA’s transatlantic service began on February 6, 1946 with a New York-Paris flight in a Constellation. Then, on June 17, 1947, Pan Am opened the first-ever scheduled round-the-world service with their L-749 Clipper America. With revealing insight into the Lockheed Constellation, the renowned aviation historian Graham M. Simons examines its design, development, and service, both military and civil. In doing so, he reveals the story of a design which, as the first pressurized airliner in widespread use, helped to usher in affordable and comfortable air travel around the world. “Simons makes good use of black-and-white and color photographs of Constellations in various airline markings and includes colorful airline brochures and marketing posters featuring the aircraft.” —Air Power History