Hard to imagine North American Aviation going from the sleek P-51 fighter designed in 1941 to the Vigilante in 1953, such a contrast in size, purpose, and success. NAA proposed a small naval attack plane, but the navy insisted on high altitude, supersonic plane with the ability to launch from zero wind. Hence the size of the Vigilante. It was also very complex for its day, only 156 were built, mostly for reconnaissance.
I liked this book. It's high gloss paper, crisp, clear B&W photos of the plane from factory to flight deck. The book's greatest points are the many pages with line drawings, cut aways, interior of the cock pit with every switch & button labeled. Some narrative covers operational squadron history, not a whole lot of history or data here. Most of that is found in the captions. At 169 pages long, it makes me think of a War Bird Tech book combined with a Detail & Scale series book, to include reviews of scale model kits of the Vigilante.
Four stars due to lack of color. I'd still recommend this to aviation, naval buffs and modelers. There's not a lot else out there, I did enjoy this book, but think for the price, there should be more color photos.