75 Years of Lockheed Martin

JAMES C GOODALL

The full title of this whopping, luxurious book is 75 Years of the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. It’s the story of the company that was founded in 1943 to develop a high altitude jet interceptor and has remained at the forefront of aviation technology ever since. There are over 800 photos of the 46 unclassified projects detailed here, from the U-2 spy plane to the F-35. It’s not all jet fighters though, there are cruise missiles and, as we get to the later years, all kinds of imaginative projects. One of the last ones is the SR-72 project, an unmanned hypersonic spy plane pencilled in for 2030 that was commissioned by NASA. Obviously, Skunk Works is also working other, advanced projects, but these are classified, so the final parts of the book are more about concepts. Regardless of that, with superb production design, endless behind the scenes photography, this is a real coffee table book for aviation lovers.

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• Osprey Publishing

• ISBN 978-1-4728-4647-1

• 388 pages • Hardback • £50