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Soviet/Russian Mil Aircraft Books - recommendations and rejections?


Feisty Midget

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Howdo,

 

This one is a big ask.

 

As you all know, since the 1990's, there has been an explosion of books on Soviet/Russian military aircraft. However, findng one with accurate and factual information with original research seems to be a little difficult. Some authors are prolific but quantity does not necessarily equate to quality.

 

I can think of one or two books that have been greeted with approval and have stood the test of time such as Andrei Fomin's 'Su27 Flanker Story', unless someone out there knows different.

 

Excluding official manuals, and avoiding hearsay and rumour that can't be backed up, what books would you recommend for accuracy of content (text, photo's, artwork, etc.) and original research, and which ones to be wary of (with reasons given)?

 

Disclaimer: I come from a scientific background so this thread is intended to establish a list of literature that can be trusted for content. It is in no way intended to be a judgement on the quality of an author or authors, good or bad (although it is relevant of course). I'm only interested in the quality of a book's content. 🙂

 

Cheers,

Feisty M.

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  • 2 months later...

The silence speaks volumes 🤨 😁

 

Okay, this is for newcomers wanting to know what books are reliable. For those not new to the subject, I'll be more or less repeating what's already known.

 

I've done a little forum research and directly contacted a few people. This is the general concensus...

 

Books by at least Andrei Fomin, Sergei Moroz, Dmitry Khazanov, and Piotr Butowski are generally considered to be at least reliable, if not excellent. Multi-authored books are also deemed reliable but most of these are in Russian, e.g., the 2 (3?) volume work on the Su-27 by Plunsky, Antonov, Zenkin, Gordyukov, and Bedretdinov (hope my transliteration is okay). These are true multi-authored books, not those that list an author and artist. There will be other authors out there that are just as reliable but I have no feedback on them either way. Books with heavy referencing are also likely to be legit'. Those that have no references at all are more likely to be collections of other people's work, or at the very least, have used very little or unreliable primary or secondary information which, if those references were published, would highlight the shortfalls in said author's research methodology.

 

It seems that many aircraft books suffer from plagiarism, and this is common to a lot of aircraft books across the board by many authors (dead and alive) located around the world, probably not helped by publishers seeking to cash in. This is of course different from repeating obvious facts, e.g., a Fw-190 A-8 has a radial engine. Like copying someone else's homework at school, plagiarism repeats the exact same errors. It's obvious and embarrassing when it's found out (and can throw the whole book into question), but if it's not and it's repeated enough, it becomes accepted 'fact'. The problem is knowing what is fact and what is fiction. Unless the reader has other access to or been provided with indisputable primary information which backs up unreferenced statements, they should not take such unverified information as granted and should use their common sense. I should also add that primary information on any subject can also be incorrect, particulalry if it has any political influence, but can be as simple as a typographical error. By the way, camouflage and markings of Russian-made aircraft are a minefield, so be very aware. This is mainly due to a lack of solid information about the air forces that deploy them, or/and a lack of accessible historical info' for older aircraft.

 

I won't mention books and authors that are dodgy as that would be unfair and not constructive. Suffice to say while these authors have indulged in less than thorough research with some of these repeating other author's errors, there is still a lot of useful factual information presented by them, and not all their books will suffer the same. I should add that I am not lambasting any of these 'dodgy' authors that have actually done some research, although one or two nameless, but minor, authors are apparently awful. Some are doing, or have done, original research on subjects that are still shrouded in myth, propaganda, and secrecy. While some of this research could be better undertaken (holes in history aside), they are nonetheless humble enough and very open to correcting any mistakes they make. New editions of such books from these authors render the previous edition obsolete, as it should and hoped to be.

 

Anyway, hope this may be of some use to someone.

 

Cheers,

FM.

 

 

 

Edited by Feisty Midget
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  • 2 weeks later...

As for my, trust or not trust the author or authors of the book can be determined by fairly simple criteria:

- the author works with government  archives ( as examples Averin; Rastrenin; Arsentyev e.t.c.)

- author works in government

Aircraft ( or other weapons) Design Bureau and    has the ability to work with their archives

 ( as examples Serov ( Lavochkin bureau)  Rigmant ( Tupolev bureau)  e.t.c.)

The remaining categories of authors are optional, you need to look at each author individually, because often there are authors-compiler, author-graphoman, e.t.c. in Russian periodicals there were reviews of the works of such authors, where reasonably pointed out examples of plagiarism or compilation, of course there were no rebuttals to these reviews.

Of course, the possibility of access to archives is not a guarantee in itself that the author will not distort the data obtained according to his political worldviews, describing only what corresponds to his vision of the world.  Then you need to read and compare several authors on the same issue.

 

Something like this.

 

B.R.

Serge

 

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I’ve only just seen this thread. Many years ago I purchased the MiG-29 in the Famous Russian Aircraft series by Yefim Gordon. It was an expensive book and it helped me get information and the details of the aircraft for my build. I see there is another line by him but a condensed version (blue cover) and often wondered how much info has transferred between the two. If somebody has got both books are they comparable?. And now recently the FRA has been revised to include the more modern example for a fraction of the first series books. Is it worth seeking out the original or getting the updated book?

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On 29/06/2020 at 00:40, Aardvark said:

As for my, trust or not trust the author or authors of the book can be determined by fairly simple criteria...

 

Thanks Serge.

 

Yes, that is good criteria. Thank you for your thoughts. 🙂

 

As an aside, what Russian periodicals do you recommend for such information?

 

Cheers,

FM.

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16 hours ago, speedy said:

I’ve only just seen this thread. Many years ago I purchased the MiG-29 in the Famous Russian Aircraft series by Yefim Gordon. It was an expensive book and it helped me get information and the details of the aircraft for my build. I see there is another line by him but a condensed version (blue cover) and often wondered how much info has transferred between the two. If somebody has got both books are they comparable?. And now recently the FRA has been revised to include the more modern example for a fraction of the first series books. Is it worth seeking out the original or getting the updated book?

 

I'm not familiar with his "new line" of books but all books on the same aircraft by the same author but by different publishers will all be a rehash of the same information. The condensced versions tend to miss a lot out and generally aren't worth the bother.

 

Regarding the new edition for the Famous Russian Aircraft series, I won't go into a detailed comparison so I'll keep it short and sweet.

 

The new edition is largely a re-jigging with new information added here and there (if we exclude the info' on the new aircraft). The main text in most places has been reworded/rewritten. The second edition has allowed the author/publishers to thin out the grammatical errors and remove pointless suppositions. Of course, there is the additional information on the new aircraft since 2006. The photographs are still there with many additional ones while a few have been removed. One thing I've noticed is that unlike the earlier edition, the photo's in the new edition are lacking attribution (which is an issue for the newly presented photographs). Also some of the text to the photo's has changed. Again, just a re-jigging in most cases but in some cases different information has been presented. For example, on page 39 of the first edition, the text to the middle plate reads "A rare in-flight shot of the first prototype MiG-29 during an early test flight" changes to "'Aircraft 901' seen during its maiden flight on 6th October 1977" in the second edition. Presumably the author found/recieved new information on that photo (which is in his collection). This is just a random example. The line drawings and art look like it's mostly new with a few hold-overs from the first edition.

 

I can't comment on the accuracy of what's in the book. I'll leave that to those who have been involved with the aircraft, its development, maintenance, and deployment.

 

One thing that annoys me, and always will, is the complete lack of references. There's no way that anyone can recheck any information to see if there have been any mistakes or misinterpretations, but that's normal for the Famous Russian Aircraft series, and most others. We have to take the author's word for it which...  ...erf, well, you know. I've just ordered, very cheaply, Mr Cooper et al's series on Middle East and African 'MiGs' so I'll have fun comparing information to see how much has been 'borrowed' from that series, if any at all.

 

Despite what I wrote in the last paragraph, if you can find it cheap enough, it's worth having alongside or instead of the first edition (and I believe first editions still fetch a fair penny on a certain auction website).

 

 

Cheers,

FM.

Edited by Feisty Midget
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  • 2 weeks later...

Some authors work almost entirely from secondary sources. When the subject is for example a Russian aircraft, the best published sources are in Russian, at least for development and Russian service history.  So for an English-speaking readership, even a "secondary source" author can have value in compiling and translating material that would be hard to find otherwise. It also depends on what you want from a book. 

If you want an insanely detailed insider account of the design & engineering development process of the Su-27, Plunsky, Antonov, Zenkin, Gordyukov, and Bedretdinov's 2 volume book can't be surpassed, written with Sukhoi insiders, in eyewatering detail. The first volume is 330+ pages and only takes the story from the beginning to the T-10 prototype.

If you want a less detailed but still largely accurate overview, covering development and service history, Fomin's book, though dated, is reliable.

 

If you want a compendium of vast numbers of Su-27 photos with at best adequate text sourced from multiple unlisted secondary sources,  Yefim's Famous Russian Aircraft is your friend.

Edited by overscan
typo
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On 6/30/2020 at 1:06 AM, Feisty Midget said:

As an aside, what Russian periodicals do you recommend for such information?

On today, as for my, it's:

- Авиация и космонавтика ( Aviation and Kosmonavtica*);

- М-хобби  ( М-Hobby**)

- Авиапанорама (Aviapanorama)

But it should be borne in mind that M-Hobby is more a magazine for modelers, the Aviapanorama is not yet published on paper, but is available for download in PDF. Крылья Родины (Krylya Rodyny) in fact magazine for magazine,  where mostly the bosses of the aircraft factories congratulate each other on 70 or 80 years

anniversary, and the history of aviation is devoted to a maximum of five or ten pages in magazine.

Also was interesting article in Двигатель (Dvigatel) magazine.

 

Book review was in 1990-2000 on История Авиации (Istoriya Aviatcii), Мир Авиации ( Mir Aviatcii) , Авиамастер (Aviamaster) Самолеты Мира (Samolety Mira) but  now this magazine not  published.

But according to my personal feelings, all these reviews are echoes of internal conflicts, a behind-the-scenes kitchen that burst into the pages of magazines.  Something can be agreed  in something not.

 

B.R.

Serge

 

_____________

* - A. Firsov periodically publishes the contents of the journal issues in his Live Journal.

**- on  scalemodels.ru periodically publishes the contents of the journal issues.

 

 

 

 

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11 hours ago, overscan said:

If you want an insanely detailed insider account of the design & engineering development process of the Su-27, Plunsky, Antonov, Zenkin, Gordyukov, and Bedretdinov's 2 volume book can't be surpassed, written with Sukhoi insiders, in eyewatering detail. The first volume is 330+ pages and only takes the story from the beginning to the T-10 prototype.

 

Thanks Overscan. I have an interest in all Russian mil aircraft. I have both volumes of Plunsky et al's Su-27. Yep, the impression I get is a well researched tome(s). I thought Fomin's book was the best until those volumes came out. I gather a third volume is planned (I hope).

 

Cheers,

F.M.

 

 

7 hours ago, Aardvark said:

On today, as for my, it's:

- Авиация и космонавтика ( Aviation and Kosmonavtica*);

- М-хобби  ( М-Hobby**)

- Авиапанорама (Aviapanorama)

But it should be borne in mind that M-Hobby is more a magazine for modelers, the Aviapanorama is not yet published on paper, but is available for download in PDF. Крылья Родины (Krylya Rodyny) in fact magazine for magazine,  where mostly the bosses of the aircraft factories congratulate each other on 70 or 80 years

anniversary, and the history of aviation is devoted to a maximum of five or ten pages in magazine.

Also was interesting article in Двигатель (Dvigatel) magazine.

 

Book review was in 1990-2000 on История Авиации (Istoriya Aviatcii), Мир Авиации ( Mir Aviatcii) , Авиамастер (Aviamaster) Самолеты Мира (Samolety Mira) but  now this magazine not  published.

But according to my personal feelings, all these reviews are echoes of internal conflicts, a behind-the-scenes kitchen that burst into the pages of magazines.  Something can be agreed  in something not.

 

B.R.

Serge

 

_____________

* - A. Firsov periodically publishes the contents of the journal issues in his Live Journal.

**- on  scalemodels.ru periodically publishes the contents of the journal issues.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks Serge 👍

 

I have quite a few PDFs of История Авиации, Мир Авиации, and Авиация и космонавтика. Time to sift through them rather than just 'collecting' them. 😁 Will look out for the others too.

 

Спасибо,

F.M.

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