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STRAIGHT DOWN! The North American A-36 dive bomber
H/B 2000 (ISBN 0 947554 73 4)
Never before told in such depth and in such detail, this is the hidden story of the only USAAF dive bomber especially built for air-land warfare in World War II. An adaptation of the famous North American Mustang fighter, the A-36 was produced quickly as a result of the Luftwaffe's devastating victories using dive bombing in the period 1939-1942. The fitting of dive brakes and bomb shackles on the basic Mustang airframe produced a dive bomber which defied the then current USAAF and RAF philosophy of the type, being a fast (350 mph) for the time as well as highly accurate bomber.
Using the memoirs of the A-36 pilots themselves from numerous interviews and official documents, the author has produced a fast-moving, very detailed and highly entertaining history of these very special aircraft which served not only with the American air force in Sicily, Italy and Burma but with one unit of the RAF in the Mediterranean also. Many photographs from the North American archives and private collections complete the book.
Oft-repeated stories of these aircraft only flying combat operations with the dive brakes wired shut are revealed by the pilots themselves as typically misinformation handed down, unchecked, through the decades, while the men who actually flew this fast, accurate and enormously effective dive bomber also give lie to the tale that the USAAF never operated true dive bombers in combat missions.
David N Orloff reviewed this book on Amazon.com and stated:- "Mr. Smith displays a command of the subject that puts him above many of the other writers of aviation history."