Project 262: The Test Pilot's Journal

Project 262: The Test Pilot's Journal by Czaia, Wolf. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9783981161502.

The Messerschmitt Me 262 is considered the forerunner of all military jets and countless civil developments. Of those machines produced up to 1945 scarcely a handful remain. They are either rotting away or enshrined as lifeless museum exhibits. But since 1992 five flying replicas, true in almost every detail to the original weapons system that first allowed man to stand on the threshold of the sound barrier, have been produced in the USA. Time and again the ambitious undertaking seemed about to founder - on financial, technical and bureaucratic hurdles, upon the crash landing of the first aircraft to be completed. But nothing could deter the small band of highly qualified specialists who had devoted themselves to the project body and soul. And in the end triumph was theirs. Now one of them tells the whole story in a superb full-color illustrated book. He is Wolf Czaia, the Me 262 projects test pilot. Jim Larsen, one of the best aviation photographers in the world, is responsible for the truly breathtaking pictures that complement the text. Together, the end result sets new standards in aviation literature. Never before has a warbird project of this kind been documented in such an authentic, informative and aesthetic way: a first-hand account of the development, construction and test-flying of the new Me 262.