MiG Master, Second Edition: The Story of the F-8 Crusader Paperback – Illustrated, March 15, 2014

MiG Master tells the tale of the F-8 (also known as the F8U) Crusader. The F-8 Crusader was a fighter developed in the 1950's and was flown by Navy and Marine pilots during the Vietnam War. Mr. Tillman tells us of the development, procurement, deployment, and fighting history of the Crusader.My Likes:I picked up this book because I was mainly interested in learning about the Crusaders service during the Vietnam War (note: I learned some from  Clashes: Air Combat over North Vietnam, 1965-1972  but wanted to expand my horizons somewhat). To support this, Mr. Tillman provides two chapters on Crusader service in Vietnam, one on the general usage of the aircraft and the other describing the air-to-air engagements. The air-to-air engagement chapter (MiG Encounters is it's name) provides good details on the individual engagements between Mig's and Crusaders.Another nice piece is the Glossaries. Here we about lots of interesting trivia about the Crusader from different variants, mapping for the original Navy identification code (F8U-nnn) to its Joint code (F-8E, F, etc...), to it's service in Vietnam (carriers it was assigned to , kills, etc...).My Dislikes:I'm going to open with the general structure of the book. Mr. Tillman writing seems a little clunky and chunky. In repeated chapters Mr. Tillman failed to define acronyms in their first use (Glossary F does function as an acronym/slang list) and repeats portions of his story. Furthermore several chapters layout promoted confusion about the F-8 or had data that seemed totally out of place or not really related.While the Vietnam chapters (The Vietnam Years and MiG Encounters) were the best in the book, I had problems with the layout because The Vietnam Years covered all uses of the Crusader and MiG Encounters then went back and only covered the air-to-air engagements. I would have rather have had one chapter where Mr. Tillman presented the Crusaders Vietnam service in total, blending air-to-air with its other missions.My last dislike was the failure to include drawing depicting engineering aspects of the F-8, armament configuration, or cockpit layout.The Rating:Three stars. I was really excited to learn about the F-8 Crusader and this one let me down. I was looking for a good book on the F-8 Crusader (ala  F-105 Thunderchief: Workhorse of the Vietnam War ) but got something that didn't scratch the itch I had. This book is a good summary of the F-8, but not one I'd want if I could only have one book on the F-8.

This is an old book, published originally in 1990, and it shows from front to end. Especially for a second edition you would expect some important improvements over a previous one, particularly if the first one was clearly incomplete and lacking in many aspects. Unfortunately this is not the case, and the reader is presented with a rather succinct development history of the Crusader, lacking much technical data and with few and short flying in-the-cockpit stories. There is not much to be found about armament, avionics and tactics, either, and the somewhat clumsy structure of the book does not help in this respect. The operational history is covered in a rather patchy way, with some glimpse into the early fleet service introduction being given. The highest point of the book is the Vietnam conflict coverage, which is pretty thorough but evidently focused on Air-to-Air engagements. There are a few B/W pictures that really do not add much value ad they are mostly not very informative.There is not much material about the Crusader available (or at all published), which seems somewhat of an oversight for such an important and popular aircraft. While its service was basically confined to the US Navy (with few aircraft also flying in the French Navy and the Philippine Air Force), its important role during the Vietnam conflict, plus being the last "Gunfighter" to be operated by the US Navy, by themselves should warrant some more attention. If you add the novel technical aspects introduced by the Crusader that clearly represented some mayor milestones in (naval) aviation, there is really no explanation for the lack of books.Nevertheless, Mr. Tillman's book, while one of the few available on this subject, falls rather short of the minimum content and structure one should expect these days from an aircraft history book. With so little other available material, there are unfortunately not many other options, and thus this book remains as the one source of Crusader material time being.

Tillman is generally a very fine military aviation author. However, I do have one complaint about this book, which is that it does not analyze the F-8 with respect to the modern criteria of fighter effectiveness. These are:1. A superior element of surprise, which is achieved by small size, no engine smoke, and excellent visibility out of the cockpit.2. Superior numbers at the point of combat, which means cost effective, reliable, low maintenance, and high combat persistence.3. Maneuverability, in case the action is not one the approximately 80% that are settled by surprise.4. Weapons systems effectiveness, which is ability to achieve reliable kills when in position to do so.On these criteria, the F-8 was pretty good on surprise except for relatively poor visibility out of the cockpit. It was cost effective and long range, but lost numbers to its high accident rate. Maneuverability was good. Weapons systems effectiveness was only modest, as the 20mm cannon installation was unreliable (though at least it had guns, where the F-4 did not), and the Sidewinders of its era were pretty low probability of kill (though that is no fault of the F-8).

Well written.

The MiG Master. The F-8 Crusader, built by Ling Tempco Vought. Read about the exploits of this Navy fighter, as flown by the best and the bravest. No kills from 130 miles away. Close-up and personal, with 4 20-mm guns. Or AIM-9 Sidewinders. It’s all here. Enjoy this book!

Another excellent book. I used to see the mighty F8 come in and out of NAS Kingsville from time to time (1968-1973).Fascinating stuff!

Well written, but concise. Couldn't put it down, but anything authored by Barrett is likely to be very, very interesting.

A well written story by the author Barrett Tillman about an airplane. The Vought F-8 was built at a different time by a great engineer. John Russell Clark was a true aircraft engineering genius.

Das Flugzeug hat mich schon als Kind sehr interessiert und dieses Buch bietet einen preiswerten Einstieg in die Thematik. Natürlich kein Standardwerk und wenig für Technikfreaks. Auch Bilder gibt es nicht im Übermass. Aber zu einem fairen Preis allemal eine Empfehlung wert.