TESTING DEATH

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TESTING DEATH

Hughes Aircraft Test Pilots and Cold War Weaponry

by George J. Marrett [4]

ISBN/SKU: 9781591145127
Binding: Paperback
Era: Cold War
Number of Pages: 288
Subject: Aviation
Date Available: January 2011

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As a test pilot at Hughes Aircraft for twenty years, Marrett tested the most sophisticated airborne radar and missiles ever designed for Navy and Air Force aircraft. This memoir recounts his skill as a pilot and puts readers in his cockpit during the F-15, F-16, and F-18 weapons systems flyoff, and during the firing of a Mach 3 Phoenix missile from an F-14A Tomcat at a Soviet MiG Foxbat target. Marrett relives stories of espionage, deadly crashes, and the development of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber radar. He combines the thrill of test flying with the humor and tragedy that is the everyday life of a test pilot to show how the Cold War was actually won in the skies above Southern California.

George J. Marrett is the author of three other books on aviation, including Howard Hughes and Contrails over the Mojave. He lives in Atascadero, CA.

See Related Items:

Contrails over the Mojave [5]

Howard Hughes [6]

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Unheralded heroes of the Cold War

Thursday, April 16, 2009

By: Joel Rudy, Maj, USAF

George Marrett delivers another stunning book on the experiences of American test pilots, drawing on his own personal experiences from the Golden Age of flight testing. "Testing Death" details the development of many of the many Hughes weapons systems that can still be found on US military aircraft thirty years after their first development. The projects include such mainstays in the US arsenal as the Phoenix and Maverick missiles, and the predecessor of today's highly classified terrain mapping radars currently found on some American military aircraft. The other key element of the book focuses on the human element of flight testing. Marrett writes of his emotional highlights of his career; his despair of losing a friend in an aircraft accident; and his strange mix of anger and empathy for a friend who sells out his country because he has fallen on hard times. This is another great book from George Marrett on the Golden Age of flight testing.