USAF Guided Missile Aerodynamics (From the United States Air Force Technical Training Manual AFM 52-3)

An exceptional reference resource for the "amateur" rocket experimenter and builder of model rockets. During the 1960s and 1970, some of America's brightest and most creative rocket scientists and engineers designed and built the largest, fastest, most powerful, and most accurate rockets and missiles ever seen. Companies like Aerojet, Rocketdyne, Hercules, Thiokol, TRW, and Sperry collaborated with the U.S. Air Force to publish an advanced training program for new missileers. The result was the AFM 52-31 Technical Training Manual "Guided Missiles Fundamentals," first printed in July 1972. AFM 52-31 is a thick, heavy, unwieldy loose-leaf 575-page volume that contains a wealth of once-secret information, drawings, and data about the most advanced rockets and missile systems of that era. The text teaches how missiles like the Falcon, Sparrow, Sidewinder, Bomarc, Bullpup, Mace, Quail, Titan, Hound Dog, Minuteman, Shrike, Maverick, and SRAM work. Topics range from Missile Aerodynamics (this book) through propulsion, design physics, control and guidance systems and components, trajectories, missile operations, lasers, instrumentation, and more. For many years this was "the bible" that trained thousands of men and women who operated the Titan and Minuteman missile systems, and many once-secret design details of those huge intercontinental ballistic missiles are well-described in this important text. Guided Missiles Fundamentals has long been out-of-print, and reprinted editions of the entire book are expensive and hard to come by. Since the big textbook is expensive in its entirety, the Rocket Science Institute has republished the most important chapters from this huge document, offering them at a more reasonable price. This book is a reprint of the 41-page section about Missile Aerodynamics. Provides both theory (with detailed examples) and practical information, intended for hands-on USAF missile technicians, mechanics, engineers, and scientists.