Reviews
This book does what any good history book should do — introduce new ideas, new ways of looking at old ideas, and it pushes its field (aviation history) in new directions, opening new doors for further study and generating interesting new questions. Highly recommended.
What Schultz has done, comprehensively, yet engagingly, is to tell the stories behind key milestones in a way that brings them to life. He shines a light on the human element, specifically the humanity behind the legends of Air Force history, while simultaneously placing them in the larger historical context visible now with the benefit of hindsight... It is an important contribution to the public discourse around the future of flight, the future of military aviation, and the future of the US Air Force. The Problem With Pilots is a rewarding read and will be of wide interest to all USAF leaders of today and tomorrow— aspiring military and civilian pilots, flight surgeons, aeronautical engineers, and aviation historians.
The Problem with Pilots is a worthy addition to the scholarship on how aviation evolved during the first half of the twentieth century and its influence on the decades that followed. It benefits from thorough archival and published primary source documentation.
Schultz is writing for two separate audiences: fellow historians of technology as well as mid-career military officers who represent the rising generation of top commanders and policymakers. This may seem a tall order, but the author's diverse background—retired military pilot, Ph.D. in History of Technology, former Commandant and Dean of the U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies—allows him to bridge this gap... Schultz provides readers with both the historical case studies and the theoretical tools to clearly demonstrate what too few policymakers seem to fully grasp: there is no such thing as technological determinism.
Is the original concept of the pilot, going, going, gone forever in this modern high speed, highly technical, highly manoeuvrable, flying world? You will have to read the book...
In a highly original and dynamic contribution, Schultz reveals the complex interplay between biology, technology, scientific research, and military necessity that transformed the airman–aircraft relationship and redefined flight.
Pilots and their magnificent flying machines are the stuff of legend. In this fascinating book, Timothy Schultz brings his combined background as an aviator and historian to explore the actual history of pilots, our concepts of them, how they are trained, and what they do. It is a story of not just the technology, but the humans wrestling with amazing change.
An original and lucid contribution to our understanding of the evolution of that crucial and unruly core of aviation technology: the pilot. Schultz's account is an indispensable link between human, remote, and autonomous aviation in the past, present, and future.
Book Details
Timeline
Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. The Pathology of Flight
3. Engineering the Human Machine
4. Flying Blind
5. The Changing Role of the Human Component
6. Flight without Flyers
7
Timeline
Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. The Pathology of Flight
3. Engineering the Human Machine
4. Flying Blind
5. The Changing Role of the Human Component
6. Flight without Flyers
7. The Modern Pilot, Redefined
8. New Horizons of Flight
9. Conclusion
Coda
About the Author
Notes
Index