Chasing the Demon audiobook

A very engaging and gripping read tracing the conquest of air and the sound barrier.Colonel Hampton's writing style has stuff for everyone, those are fascinated by aviation history and those who are into thrillers. The bar set by Tom Wolfe's Right Stuff" is so high that no author can ever out-climb it, yet Col Hampton's book has proved this notion wrong.You gotta read this book, you owe to yourself.

An excellent history of the first manned flight to break the sound barrier by Dan Hampton, who is rapidly becoming the leading aviation history writer in the US. I really enjoyed the story behind the testing base at Muroc (later Edwards AFB) and the chapters describing the German experiments that led the way to swept-wing aircraft and eventually the defeat of the sound barrier. My only complaint is that the book is a bit short - the first half of the book is entirely dedicated to a lengthy description of the WWII service and personal histories of a few key characters, while the events that took place between the end of the war and Chuck Yeager's historic flight seemed to be compressed into a few dozen pages. Throughout the book, I got the sense that Hampton wanted to emphasize the personal histories of the people involved rather than the technological innovations that led to the X-1. Highly recommended.

I won this on Good Reads.At first, I was taken aback that “Chasing the Demon” by Dan Hampton was not just a snap shot of the exact time when the sound barrier was broken. Then my brain turned on and I realized that a review of the history of powered flight made a lot of sense. Dan did a great job of piecing together the personalities and events (like WWII) in a way that was entertaining and informative. An aeronautical engineer might find it simplistic, but I thought it is a great read. I’ve already recommended it to people.

Chasing the Demon.A story of the quest to break the sound barrier. I do not know how many histories of that quest I have read, nor do I know how histories of flight I have read. But I’ve read a boatload of both. Each new history contains a few things I never knew, forgot and was happy to be reminded, and castigates something I’d taken as gospel. Chasing the Demon has some of the first, a fair amount of the second, a weensy bit of the third, but I read it from front to back as if were the first time.Fine book.

Wow a definite change of pace book for me!I so enjoyed reading our aviation history concerning breaking sound barrier. The events, the challenges, the personalities, the locations. To a more learned aviation person/historian this book may not fill their bill. And smack dab in middle of the book is written out “The Truman Doctrine”. What a great reminder of what and who our nation is to the world. Washington DC men and women who mold our country’s actions daily need to revisit that document and it’s meaning.

Great historical perspective on the quest to break the sound barrier - the demon. I was surprised by how much the author detailed the back story - the approach to WWII and then the desperate research to build faster and more deadly weapons, especially airplanes and rockets.I did love how irreverent Chuck Yeager was in his test flights and the final surpassing of Mach 1 flights - he would roll and spin the X-1 when he was simply supposed to be straight and level or diving it!

Ksiazka opisuje to jak doszlo do zlamania bariery dzwiekowej. Uwaza sie, ze pierwszym pilotem ktory pokonal bariere predkosci dzwieku byl Mick Yeagger lecacy samolotem firmy Bell X1. Chociaz prawdopodobne jest rowniez do iz samolot F84 byl jednak tym pierwszym samolotem ktrory pokonal predkosc dzwieku. W ksiazce sporo jest wiadomosci historyczych, opisane sa biografie pierwszych glownych pilotow oraz konstruktorow samolotow ponaddzwiekowych. 

Excellent book on the history of aviation.Which I guess might be a good or bad thing for some, since the book title ostensibly says it's about the quest to break the sound barrier, beginning in the 1950s. Yet, this narrative goes all the way back to the Wright brothers.Still, most aviation buffs will find it an easy, fast paced and informative read. Especially us fans of military warbirds!

I enjoyed the book I understand the negative reviews of this book as there is a lot historical detail and less about the the the X-1. If you are from USA you r listening to a reahash of stuff you already know.

Checked out a copy from my local library. Much appreciate Dan writing a historical narrative placing the pilots as part of history. But I do hold back a star because I wish there was more written about the two flights breaking the sound barrier.

An interesting history that sets a lot of the Hollywood myths aside and goes into the run-up from WWII to the desert of Muroc, California in 1947. Many younger pilots and older pilots are chronicled—with Chuck Yeager being one of the younger, more expendable pilots.

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Chasing the Demon was awesome!

This was an amazing book about aviation writ large. I loved it and will recommend it to anyone who has ever understood the fascination with planes.

Solid book about the attempts to break the sound barrier.

Chasing the Demon is not exactly what I expected from the title. I knew it was about the attempt to conquer the sound barrier and exceed speeds of Mach 1, but I did not expect the lion’s share of the book to be devoted to the events leading up to that particular event. The author explains why he did that in a satisfactory manner, but I am still slightly disappointed. Although I must admit, the history of aviation was really fascinating. I did not know that the Wright brothers were super greedy and held back the development of aviation in the United States. I mean, I knew that they did the first flight, but there are always those qualifiers. Flight requires four aspects to be considered legitimate. All of the previous attempts lacked one thing or another, but the Wright Brothers managed to control the plane and not be beholden to the wind or some other force. In any case, this author can certainly write well. Dan Hampton writes with grace and aplomb. It helps a great deal that he is a former fighter pilot. Hampton is familiar with the material to be presented and delves into the aerodynamics to some extent. In that vein, he discusses the difficulties of engineering that early aviators met with. First off, they knew of the sound barrier and all civilizations that had whips broke it early on. The same goes for the progress of firearms. The history of that alone could fill a book and most likely already has. To return to airplanes though, in dives, the Sound Barrier was broken several times, but the key aspect is that it wasn’t really controlled. The airplane wasn’t engineered for those speeds properly and began to fall apart. The same thing goes with developing an engine capable of such thrust.So as I mentioned, most of the book is devoted to the events that shaped the men who chased the demon; the aftermath of WWI, the Jazz Age, Radio Programs, the rise of Totalitarianism, the Great Depression and so on. Once World War II came around, these pilots were enlisted in the military, some of them even taking part in sorties during the Pearl Harbor attack. World War II came around and the military was eager for really fast airplanes. Initially, Hitler did not see the value in a supersonic fighter plane since his battles were going well. Eventually, it came to pass that it was too late to do anything on the German side. The Axis and Allies came to see that the tactical advantage of supersonic flight and it became something of a matter of secrecy and pride. I mean, now it is somewhat known that Chuck Yeager broke the Sound Barrier on October 14, 1947, but this is disputed in the book. The author argues that the first person to do this in a controlled fashion was George Welch, a man that was not in the military at the time.Chasing the Demon contains a primer on Aerodynamics, a section showing a select bibliography, and a section for elaborating on the notes and an index. The book was entertaining enough, but I don’t really know if I can rate it higher than a four out of five.