Back in the 'olden days', one could walk into a large department store like Macy's or Sears or Walgreen's and find a wide variety of items, including model kits and books. Your editor got his first budding interest in aviation history back in 1960 when his parents bought him volume 1 of William Green's 'War Planes of the Second World War: Fighters.

This little 5 x 5½ inch pocket book was not cheap for the day ($3.50), but was written by a known authority and had short histories of all the fighter aircraft. This first volume (they listed planes in alphabetic order by country) included the aircraft of Australia, Belgium, Bohemia-Moravia, Finland, France and Germany. Needless to say, there were a lot of aircraft that this little kid of the time had never heard of. In fact, only the Bf-109 and FW-190 were even recognizable!

Needless to say, I just HAD to have the others in the series. 1961 saw the release of the other three fighter volumes. Later years saw an edition on Float Planes and another on Flying Boats. These had solid background covers with grey-shade profiles on the covers. Second editions added color covers. As you can see from the images above, my books were well used and the covers took a major beating. Actually, all of my original books were trash within about 5 years as I'd managed to draw on the profiles and do some of my own coloring!

The series then moved on to Bomber and Reconnaissance aircraft and managed volumes 7-10 before stopping in 1968 after getting up to the Me-328. Perhaps the interest had gone; I do not know, but it is a shame as they were great little guides.

Naturally, some of the information is no longer valid as research over the intervening 35 or more years has brought new details to light, but they are still valid references and ones that, even after all these years, I reach for when looking for information.

Despite being gone from bookstores for many decades, these books can still be found in various condition from time to time. I can recommend them to those of you who not only may have had these in your youth, but also want a handy 'first search' guide.

Books courtesy of my reference library.

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