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If you've ever owned a car then the chances are that at some point you've needed to acquire the know-how to fix it. Rather than fork out a small fortune to a garage to fit new brake pads and discs, you've turned to a Haynes Manual to show you how to do the job.

The clearly illustrated step-by-step approach to car maintenance has been the hallmark of Haynes for more than 50 years, and millions of motorists the world over trust the brand to give them a no-nonsense guide to their own motor vehicles.

A recent spin-off from the car manuals has been to apply the same user-friendly format to some design classics from the worlds of aviation, shipping and military vehicles. We started in 2007 by publishing a manual for what is probably the most famous aircraft of the 20th century – the Supermarine Spitfire.

Scope for an in-depth technical manual is necessarily restricted by our self-imposed limit to 160 pages – and there aren't many who are lucky enough to have their own Spitfire in the back yard. For those curious enough to want to know how it works, the Haynes Spitfire Manual offers an insight (and that's the key word – ‘insight') into the design, construction, operation and maintenance of RJ Mitchell's war-winning fighter aircraft.

Of particular interest is the unusual construction of the Spitfire's main wing spar booms. Each spar boom is built up from five square-section concentric tubes made of 11 SWG aluminium alloy and one square section central plug. The tubes are made to fine tolerances and fit tightly into each other. Using specially commissioned photographs and original working drawings we show how at the wing root the spar booms are made up of five thicknesses of tube, but as the loads on the spar decrease progressively towards the wing tip, so the inner tubes terminate one by one, until at the wing tip only the two outer thicknesses of tube remain.

This is just one design aspect of the Spitfire that is laid bare in what has become one of Haynes' best-selling titles. When the success of this new format and of the Spitfire Manual in particular became apparent, we decided to add new subjects to the series – Avro Lancaster, Hawker Hurricane and Messerschmitt Bf109 followed, and then we thought why limit ourselves only to historic piston-engine aircraft?

So we added the Mach 2 F-4 Phantom with its unique design features of a wing centre section torque box milled from one piece of solid metal and 200 or so external access doors to internal equipment to make servicing that much easier for its time.

In the pipeline we have Haynes manuals on the RAF Tornado and its successor in the air defence role, the Eurofighter Typhoon, as well as the Lockheed C-130 Hercules air transport workhorse. And at one time, the USAF/CIA's top secret Cold War spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird.

Of course, none of us will ever own a Lockheed Blackbird, but the next best thing is to pick up the Haynes manual on the Mach 3 Cold War warrior and discover how the aircraft was designed and built to withstand the rigorous thermal heating - and the subsequent thermal cooling - created by sustained supersonic flight and deceleration back into subsonic flight.

Our manuals give readers unique insights into how the designers of iconic aircraft have embraced a wide range of exciting developments in aerospace technology – from swing wing to stealth, and titanium airframes to composite materials.

www.haynes.co.uk