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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0556.PDF
55S ~ . t- . v- v FLIGHT, 26 April 1957 THE AERONAUTICAL BOOKSHELF "Famous Fighters of the Second World War," by William Green. Macdonald and Co., Ltd., 16 Maddox Street, London, W.I. Illustrated. Price 18s. AN eighteen-shilling book devoted to the "biographies" of •»*• 18 World War II aircraft may sound rather on the expensive side; but never before have these particular types been written up so thoroughly and illustrated so fully. The result, therefore, is a work that will interest anyone who built, flew or serviced these aircraft; and it is, of course, a "must" for the enthusiast and model-maker. The aircraft described are the Me 109, Hurricane, Spitfire, Bf (Me) 110, Curtiss P-40, Zero, Beaufighter, FW 190, Lightning, Mosquito, Thunderbolt, Mustang, Typhoon and Tempest, Kawasaki Hien, Kawanishi Shiden, Me 262,and Me 163 series. Typical of the thoroughness of treatment is that the chapter on the Me 109 runs to 12 pages, containing 25 photographs, 14 line drawings giving the side views of all major variants and a fine three-dimensional G.A. drawing by Gen Heumann. Many of the photographs show little-known variants of unusual interest. There are few omissions, and these are mostly one-off rare birds such as the "Sunflower Seed" Hurricane and the Typhoon night fighter with A.I. equipment. J.W.R.T. "Life in the Air Force To-Day." A young man's guide to all branches of the Royal Air Force. By G/C. E. C. Kidd. Cassell and Co., Ltd., 37/38 St. Andrew's Hill, London, E.C.4. Illustrated. Price 10s 6d. THIS interesting and informative little book provides answersto practically every possible question about the R.A.F. within its 222 pages and half-a-dozen brief appendices. It has been written primarily with an eye on National Servicemen and, as Marshal of the R.A.F. Sir John Slessor points out in his fore- word, may help to encourage some of them to make the Air Force their career or at least give them a more enjoyable two years' service by explaining "what it's all in aid of." Sir John's foreword provides an admirable introduction, because he writes of the R.A.F.'s history from vast personal experience (and perhaps with an occasional slight nostalgia). Thus he con- trasts the Vulcan with "the old Heyford or Whidey," the Hunter and Javelin with "the Gladiators and Gamecocks of the thirties"; speaks of the blue uniform which "has changed a bit since I first knew it" ("we used to wear breeches and puttees then and high collars to the tunic"); and recalls the R.A.F.'s inter-war service on the North-West Frontier, in Iraq, Jordan, the Persian Gulf and India. Underlying it all he stresses the idea of "service" as a fine thing for its own sake. This makes a good start for G/C. Kidd's admirably down-to- earth and first-hand account (based again on long personal experi- ence) of life in the Air Force today, covering every aspect in concise, sensible style and having (as the publishers point out in an authorized statement) the Air Ministry's complete approval. It should, of course, be added that the book was published just before the recent Defence White Paper radically altered the future outlook for the R.A.F. H. W. "Vision," by Harold Mansfield. Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York. Illustrated. Price $5.00. T^HIS history of the trials and triumphs of the Boeing Airplane -•• Company throughout its forty-year life is probably the finest book of its kind yet published. The author is Boeing's director of public relations; but this fact has not resulted in suppression of references to disappointments or setbacks, and only the harshest critic would regard Vision as anything but full, fair and frank, except for the familiar (but in this case unexpected) bleat that after the war Britain set up to "rival America's aircraft industry with government-supported jet transport development." This comment is all the more difficult to understand when one reads how vital were the KC-97 and KC-135 contracts to Boeing's civil transport programme. How does one begin to review such a book in a few hundred words, when there is so much that is new and wonh repeating? Some 96 Boeing types have been built in 40 years and most of them were interesting, including even the GA-X armoured ground-attack triplane of 1920 whose almost-deafened pilot asked after landing: "How can you attack the ground with an aeroplane you can't see out of, and that's too unwieldy to manoeuver close to the ground?" Looking at the chart (forming the end-papers of the book) which shows all Boeing designs to scale, it is interesting to see how, up to the early thirties, Boeing concentrated mainly on small single- and two-seaters. Exceptions were the Model 40 and Model 80 transports, and these led to the famous Monomail monoplane which was the fore-runner of the revolutionary YB-9 bomber, Model 247 airliner and the B-17/Stratoliner family. Since then, Boeing has built only big aircraft, and the chart is dominated by the Superfortresses, Stratocruisers, Stratojets, Stratofortresses, Stratotankers and Jet Stratoliners of the 1940s and 1950s, with the sinister black shape of the IM-99 Bomarc missile pointing to the future. It is difficult to imagine a time when Boeing was a small struggling company; yet it might well have gone out of existence in 1921 if it had not won a contract to build 200 Thomas Morse MB-3A fighters by quoting a price so low that its competitors expected it to lose money on the deal. Nor did the financial worries disappear then, for an even harder struggle for survival followed the end of World War II, when it seemed that the U.S.A.F. was no longer interested in new bombers, so that work came almost to an end in the company's Seattle factory, which at that time cost half-a-million dollars a day to run in terms of payroll alone. Unfortunately, the aircraft industry may never enjoy the security of older industries, for fighters and bombers are dying and the market for civil aircraft is restricted. How can it be otherwise when a single large jet-transport costs more than six times as much as a Boeing 314 flying-boat transport of 1937 and sixty times as much as the Boeing 40 transport of ten years earner, of which a fleet of 25 was designed, built and put into service in six months? On the military side, it is interesting to read how in 1933 the U.S. Army Air Corps planned a gradual step-up in size and weight of its bombers from 75ft span and 15,000 lb weight, through seven stages to 325ft and 300,000 lb, and beyond. Sub- sequent designs fitted into this plan until the advent of jet power and, even then, the original concept of the B-52 was a 400 m.p.h. turboprop bomber weighing no less than 480,000 1b. The two prototypes of this aircraft cost, incidentally, $53 million. No less interesting is the story of the development of the B-47, which began with a straight wing and with six engines mounted in its fuselage, and passed through stages involving use of a complex tricycle undercarriage and wing-tip-mounted turbojets before its present configuration was adopted. These are facts which interest the technician and enthusiast; . but there is something in Vision for everyone—even for students of psychology and industrial relations, for this is a story of people as well as aircraft, and a model for all future company historians. J.W.R.T. OTHER BOOKS RECEIVED Jet Engine Manual, by E. Mangham and A. Peace. George Newnes, Ltd., Tower House, Southampton Street, London, W.C.2. Price 10s 6d. Vitality in Administration, by Herbert Morrison, Basil Small- peice, Sir Alexander Fleck, Sir Wilfrid Neden, A. D. Bonham- Carter, Major-General G. N. Russell. George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., Ruskin House, 40 Museum Street, London, W.C.I Price 8s 6d. Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 19S5. United States Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. Price $4. First Flights, by Oliver Stewart. Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane, London, E.C.4. Price 25s. Aircraft Hydraulics, Vol. 1: Hydraulic Systems, edited by H. G. Conway. Chapman and Hall, 37 Essex Street, London, W.C.2 Price 35s. The Specification and Management of Materials in Industry, by C. H. Starr. Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 30 Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C.I. Price 21s. The Helicopter, by Jacob Shapiro. Frederick Muller, Ltd., Ludgate House, 110 Fleet Street, London, E.C.4. Price 21s. Front the Ground Up, by Sandy A. F. MacDonald. Aviation Service Corporation, Ltd., Port Credit P.O., Ontario, Canada. Price $4. Post-war International Civil Aviation Policy and the Law of the Air, by H. A. Wassenbergh. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Holland. An A.B.C. of Aeronautics, by L. L. Beckford. Cassell and Co., Ltd., 37/38 St. Andrew's Hill, London, E.C.4. Price 15s. Hotels and Restaurants in the British Isles. British Travel and Holidays Association, Queen's House, 64 St. James's Street, London, S.W.I. Price 5s. Complete and Free, by Eric Williams. Eyre and Spottiswoode (Publishers), Ltd., 15, Bedford Street, Strand, W.C.2. Price 16s. Realities of Space Travel, edited by L. J. Carter. Putnam and Co., Ltd., 42, Great Russell Street, London, W.C.I. Price 35s. What's New in Flying?, by Marie Neurath. Max Parrish and Co., Ltd., 55, Queen Anne Street, London, W.I. Price 6s.
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