COBRA IN THE SKY

Mr. Herron's Cobra, the supersonic transport, has been altered and his book has been invalidated by the decision to abandon the swing-wing design of the Boeing 2707, the feature that gave Boeing the edge over Lockheed for the developmental contract and that is taken for granted here. In the stream of books on aviation in general, on commercial aviation in particular, it's no loss. After a hop over the history of transportation ""from caves to Kitty Hawk,"" this skips through the growth of commercial flying until the SST conflict; then the author jumps in--to the aforementioned pitfall. In any case his persistence in talking of the British-French Concorde in terms of today (mid-'68) and tomorrow (late '68) would have dated the book by the end of the year. Unplanned obsolescence.