WRECKCHASING

Presented by Pacific Aero Press

 

 

About the Author:

Author Nicholas A. Veronico comes from a family of pilots – both his mother and father held private tickets, and his brother is a commercial pilot who flies for a major airline. Veronico got his start in aviation journalism as a freelance journalist in 1984, then joined Pacific Flyer Aviation Newspapers. He then went on to serve as editor of In Flight USA, contributed extensively to FlyPast magazine, and in 1994 joined Airliners: The World's Airline Magazine. His career path lead to the high-tech industry where he worked for an embedded systems-on-a-chip magazine, Silicon Strategies. Subsequently, he served as editor of Gridpoints, the quarterly publication of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division, which covered NASA's scientific achievements in computational physics using high-performance computers.

In addition to working in the magazine field, Veronico has collaborated with a number of today's best aviation historians and authors and has written more than 25 books on a wide range of aviation, military, and local history subjects. He is the lead writer on the Wreckchasing series of books, and spends a fair amount of time researching and exploring these sites. Most recently, he located the crash of a Navy R4D (DC-3) in the hills less than a mile from his house.

Veronico's warbird-related titles include FlyPast, Fly Present (Arms and Armour Press); F4U Corsair: Combat, Development, and Racing History of the Corsair; and the Raceplane Tech Series, which has detailed Griffon-Powered Racing Mustangs, and Bearcats & Corsairs (both with Kevin Grantham).

Military Aircraft Boneyards (with Kevin Grantham and Scott Thompson) examines the U.S. military's aircraft disposal policies and practices from 1943 and the end of World War II through today's aircraft recycling program at AMARG, Davis-Monthan AFB, Tucson, Arizona. This 128-page book includes 90 B&W photos plus 60 in color with rare World War II-era color photos from Kingman, Litchfield Park, and the post-World War II scrapping operation at Bush Field, Georgia. As a follow-up, in 2010, with Ron Strong, Veronico wrote and photographed AMARG: America’s Military Aircraft Boneyard detailing the aircraft storage and recycling process in Tucson.

On the modern military side, Veronico wrote Blue Angels: A Fly-by History, Sixty Years of Aerial Excellence (2005) and Blue Angels: 50 Years of Precision Flight (1996, with Marga Fritze) for the team's 50th and 60th anniversaries. Both books detail the evolution of the Blue Angels from the team's inception flying F6F Hellcats to today's F/A-18 Hornets.

Released in May 2004 was 21st Century U.S. Air Power (with Jim Dunn), which details all of the combat aircraft in the current U.S. inventory. Also with Jim Dunn, Veronico coauthored Giant Cargo Planes, which details the U.S. Air Force's combat cargo aircraft and troop haulers.

Working with his father, Armand, the father/son duo penned Battlestations: American Warships of World War II, which shows the Naval war in full color. The authors located more than 150 rare, color photos from World War II to accompany their narrative of the Navy's fight across the globe.

Veronico has completed two volumes of Specialty Press' Airliner Tech Series. His first, Volume 9, Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, took nearly 10 years to research and write. This 104-page book covers the Stratocruiser's development history, interior/exterior features, airline service, guppy conversions, hull losses, and each aircraft's individual history. This book features 250 photos and illustrations with 8 pages of color. In 2005, Veronico and author/historian William T. Larkins collaborated on Airliner Tech Series Vol. 12, Convair Twins: Piston Convair-Liners, Prop-Jet Turbo-Liners. This book delves into the first post-war medium range airliner, launched by American Airlines. The narrative takes readers through the development, the aircraft interior and exterior, and the airlines that operated the type.

In May 2006, Nicholas A. Veronico's new book in Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series was released. This volume, Images of Aviation: Moffett Field (covering NASA Ames Research Center as well), details the establishment of both activities on a plot of land in Sunnyvale/Mountain View, California. Moffett Field was first home to the dirigible USS Macon, while research at the Ames facility began in 1939 just prior to World War II.

Following the release of Images of Aviation: Moffett Field, Veronico wrote World War II Shipyards by the Bay for Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series. During the war, more than 1,000 ships, both military and commercial, were built in the Bay Area. This book is a photographic tour of yards like Marinship in Sausalito, the Kaiser Permanente Shipyards in Richmond, Moore Shipbuilding and Dry Dock in Oakland, Western Pipe and Steel in South San Francisco, and the Joshua Hendy Iron Works in Sunnyvale where Liberty and Victory ship engines were built. The Navy yards at Mare Island and Hunters Point and the ships they built and repaired are also profiled. As a side note, the author's grandfather worked at CalShip in Wilmington, Calif., during the war. When certain skills were needed at the Kaiser Yards in Richmond, the elder Veronico commuted from his home in Los Angeles to Richmond three weeks a month and, due to the wartime housing shortage, lived in a garage converted to sleep six men. Construction of worker housing for the Kaiser Yards and Marinship are also shown in the book. World War II Shipyards by the Bay also features a chapter on the S.S. Robert E. Peary, a ship built in a record-breaking four days at Kaiser Richmond.

On TV, look for Scrapping Aircraft Giants, a documentary produced by Vision Entertainment of Las Vegas, about how commercial aircraft are sold and recycled. Scrapping Aircraft Giants details the recycling and parts reclamation process and shows how scrappers can turn an airliner into an aluminum ingot in just days. The script for this show was written by Nicholas A. Veronico with Douglas Scroggins, president of Lost Birds Aviation. The show debuted on The Discovery Channel-Europe in 2005. In 2011, Veronico and Scroggins collaborated on a visual account of the commercial aircraft scrapping industry in Junkyard Jets. This book covers the part-out process, aircraft recycling, and how jetliners are used in the movie and TV business.

On the local history front, Veronico and his wife Betty collaborated on a photographic history of their hometown. The book, titled Images of America: San Carlos, was released by Arcadia Publishing in the late summer of 2007. The book takes readers from the Spanish discovery of the San Francisco Bay Area, through the incorporation of the town in 1925, to today. San Carlos was home to a large military dog training center during World War II, and is considered the birthplace of today's Silicon Valley; San Carlos was home to Varian, Ampex, Dalmo-Victor, Eimac, and others. The book contains more than 200 photos of the town, its businesses, architecture, and people throughout its history.

In addition, Veronico's work has been recognized with a Bronze Telly Award for the NASA Video Lessons in Inspiration and with awards from the Military Writers Society for Blue Angels: A Fly-by History, Sixty Years of Aerial Excellence and for AMARG: America’s Military Aircraft Boneyard.

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