To bail out of a stricken airplane is a pilot's or aircrew's final chance to escape death. It is a traumatic and hazardous exercise that is only practiced in extremis and is in itself full of danger with no guarantee of survival. Many struggled free of a flaming and spinning aircraft only to see their parachute alight above them, some were machine gunned to death by their opponents as they drifted to earth, some landed in mine-fields and were blown...

Many aircraft, some famous and some rare, gained a reputation for being difficult to fly and sometimes downright dangerous. This book looks at some of the worst culprits over a period spanning World War One to the age of supersonic flight. The following aircraft are included. BE.2-The RFC went to war in it in 1914. The BE was easy to fly and very stable-but it was difficult to maneuver and very easy to shoot down. Tarrant Tabor-The Tabor was grotesque,...

Von Kleist, one of Hitlers best panzer leaders, described the T-34 as The finest tank in the world. There could have been no finer accolade from a commander whose panzer divisions experienced the full fury of its devastating attacks on the Eastern Front. Without doubt, the T-34 was one of the best tanks of all time, and in this volume in the TankCraft series Robert Jackson tells its story. He describes its conception in the 1930s, its development...