I wanted to like this book. I really did. The subject of rare aircraft, and particularly conceptual designs that were never built, is of extreme interest to me. But this book didn't scratch that itch for me. The only thing preventing an even lower rating is that it contains a lot of rare photographs. Having said that, it also contains a large number of photos of not the aircraft themselves, but models of them. I completely understand that sometimes there aren't pictures of conceptual aircraft, because none were built. In that case photos of models may be the best that can be done, although frankly I'd prefer seeing the plans and other materials from which the models were created, rather than someone else's interpretation of those things converted into solid form. But take the Arado 234, for which numerous photographs exist, some of which are included in the book - but so are 8 photos of a model of the most common variant of the plane, using up space that could have gone to more pictures of the actual plane itself. Or better yet, to some accurate 3-views at a useful size, instead of the 2 tiny ones at 2 inches by 4 inches each. They're crude at this scale, and useless for scaling-up by modelers. This kind of thing is rampant throughout the book. Then there are some factual errors that display either extreme carelessness or a startling lack of knowledge. For example, on page 24 there's a photo whose caption reads, "Several new-looking Boeing B-29s." It's possible that the tiny bit of one wing and an engine nacelle that are showing from the camera plane belong to a B-29, but of the other 2 aircraft clearly visible, one is a B-17. The fact that this mistake was made in the first place is disturbing, but wasn't there any sort of technical editing done on the content of this book? If an obscure prototype had been misidentified, I'd understand; but confusing a B-17 with a B-29? If such an obvious mistake can be made and not caught prior to printing, it makes it hard to accept the much less well-known information that the book is really all about. Finally, it's grating to keep referring to every non-Nazi airplane having similar design features as "a shameless copy" (an expression used more than once, about different aircraft) of that German concept. "Shameless" is a value judgment that's insulting to the memories of the engineers who were struggling to come to grips with totally new methods of propulsion and aerodynamics in a time of national crisis. "It's the same air everywhere" as they say, and American or Soviet or Swedish or Argentinian wind tunnels were going to reveal exactly the same principles and solutions that German ones did. So why squander the time and money to repeat high-quality work? That's not shamelessness, it's efficiency. Besides, the "copies" in many cases don't really look that much like the alleged source. Tank's 183 jet concept is startling to see because its nose inlet fairs smoothly up into the canopy and then the fuselage suddenly ends at the wing trailing edge, turning into an exceptionally long skinny vertical tail with horizontal tails on top of it. It's that fuselage truncation and weird vertical tail continuation that make the 183 unique, and those characteristics aren't shared by the "shameless copy" of the MiG-15 with its conventional aft fuselage (and lack of a T-tail) or even the Saab 29, whose aft fuselage is far longer than the 183's, and again lacks the T-tail. Only the Argentinian Pulqui 2 is really a near-copy, which isn't surprising since Tank fled Germany and went to Argentina to produce it himself. The hammering on "copy copy copy" becomes annoying and distracting. Bottom line: Buy the book for the pictures, but don't expect many useful 3-views, check the information carefully against other sources before accepting it, and try to ignore the editorializing of the author if you can. I couldn't.

5 Stars, but one thing ruins an otherwise excellent book. I believe this is a printing error which has been present since the book was published and has never been rectified sadly. From page 73-80 it appears the diagrams are not complete or the images are in pieces, this spoils an otherwise great book. I was expecting this to be dealt with after the initial publishing of the book when I first bought it.
David Myhra is part of ( what I call) the elite Luft 46 circle and as such can't be faulted for his published works on this subject. I do find some( not all of his work) becoming repetative, it gives the impression of padding in places sadly.
It's a fine book all the same with especially fine photos of exotic models built by some top rate modellers, special mention must go to Gunter Sengfelder, Dan Johnson, Jamie Davies and Reinhard Roaser for their fantastic model picture contributions. I hasten to say the misprinted images are not the fault of the seller whose service was top rate in every way. A great addition to any Luft" 46 book collection or aviation bookshelf.

A descent book. It gives good background on the manufacturers and designers. It could do much better with schematics. A descent buy.

Best book I have read on this subject. The text describes the design histories of the various projects, as far as the available surviving information permits. There are numerous black and white photos and a few color photos and renderings.

I must have a different edition of this book compared to what other reviewers have complained about. I couldn't find any duplicated pictures or really poor quality photos. As far as I can determine, the captions match the photos. The quality of most of the photos is reasonably good, considering that they were taken by old film cameras 70 to 80 years ago. There are a few instances of obviously deteriorated photos, but I think that inevitably occurs over time with those old film photos. There are some grainy or pixilated renderings in pages 73 - 80 related to some Blohm und Voss projects, but that was all. I don't know why that problem occurred only in that section.

The book was published in 1998, so don't expect modern 3D color renderings.

There are short biographies of the German designers and aerodynamic researchers in the book. The last Chapter "Epilogue" describes the fates of the people involved in these airplanes and also discusses their long-term influence on airplane design.

Probably the most thorough treatment of projected German aircraft, Myhra's book also suffers from inexplicable lapses: pictures are duplicated, line drawings are pixilated, and illustrations often so jumbled that one does not always know which plane is being described. The use of models and digital imaging is appreciated, but there is so little editorial control over layout that any benefit is lost. A great muddle of a book that even includes a photograph of a Messerschmitt sewing machine. If only it had been better edited.

Myhra has produced an excellent summary of German advanced aircraft designs during the "Third Reich". What sets this work apart from similar offerings by Masters and Schlick and Meyer is the coverage given to the designers of the aircraft and the companies which built them coupled with the use of colour photographs of scale models. On the down side, the book could have done with more proof reading to remove some of the repetition in the text and numerous minor typo's. It was also let down by some very poor quality illustrations, some of the line art looks like it was drawn using a ZX Spectrum home computer from the early '80's. In general the illustrations are poorly organised and of greatly variable quality. I would hope that a second edition would correct these minor flaws, a tie up with Dan Johnson's excellent web site, Luft 46 would allow the illustrations to be greatly improved.