Barons of the Sky - Hardcover

Biddle, Wayne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671667262 ISBN 13: 9780671667269

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1991

Synopsis

Presents the history of the aerospace weapons industry and of the extraordinary people and machines that created such companies as Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, and Boeing

About this title

Review:

Biddle pulls back the cover of the traditional myths about the founders of these firms being steely business geniuses and gifted aeronautical engineers. He paints a fascinating and stormy portrait of eccentric and often uneducated visionaries who happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right dreams.--John J. Nance "San Francisco Chronicle "

Synopsis:

This panoramic history of the rise of the American aerospace industry traces the careers of the men whose names became synonymous with today's military-industrial complex: Glenn Martin of Martin Marietta, Donald Douglas of McDonnell Douglas, Jack Northrop of Northrop, and Allan and Malcolm Loughead of Lockheed. Weaving together institutional history and individual biography, Wayne Biddle depicts the years of uncertainty after World War I, the bonanza of World War II, and the cut-throat post-war market. Unlike the automobile industry, the aircraft industry could never be sustained by the middle-class consumer economy, and these legendary founders had to depend on the federal government to keep their companies aloft. Biddell tells the thrilling story of obsessed men who, chasing their dreams of flight and success, created the modern aerospace weapons industry.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0671667262
• ISBN 13: 9780671667269
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1