by Dr. Alfred Price and Mike Spick, 2000

This book chronicles the development of five WWII aircraft from the original concept, to design, to production, and modification throughout the war.  The authors also describe the various missions each aircraft participated in.

The book is not very exciting or entertaining but it does provide some interesting information.  The main thing I took away from reading it was that the British seemed to be the most innovative as they improved their aircraft the most during the course of the war, both in terms of increasing performance and also correcting flaws in the original design.  The Americans approach toward improvement was directed more at increasing horsepower, but that approach brought additional problems of added weight and sometimes caused the “improved” aircraft to be less maneuverable.  The Germans, on the other hand, seemed to improve their aircraft by increasing performance but the Americans and British always seemed a step ahead.

Perhaps there was some bias due to the fact that the authors are British, but I tend to think they were pretty accurate given the history of American engineering after WWII, particularly in the field of automobiles.