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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 2265.PDF
560 FLIGHT International, 4 October 1962 I; I The Pen and the Air RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO AVIATION LITERATURE REVIEWED BY HUMPHREY WYNN AERONAUTICS now has as many sides as the most fabulous of diamonds. Like a Koh-i-nor among the sciences, all its facets give off a sparkle of individual interest. The newest and brightest is astronautics, evolved only fifty years since man first learned to fly. Yet between that and the simple business of getting off the ground—simple to us, but something man groped after for hundreds of years—there are myriad activities, multi farious lines of research: powered, unpowered or man-powered flight; turbine, rocket or nuclear engines; material specifications to withstand ever-increasing demands; physiological investigation of the limits which can be imposed on the human frame. On the other hand, some of these facets of aeronautics reflect not the future but the past—air battles or races long ago, or famous air craft which now exist no longer, or the life-story of some great aeronautical figure. Light from these bright surfaces is similarly reflected in the world of aeronautical books, which are so diverse in content that it is sometimes hard to realize that they all have some bearing upon the same theme. Take two examples from the latest batch, titles which have arrived in Flight International's offices during past months. The Hawker Hurricane is a beautifully produced pictorial mono graph, by Francis K. Mason (Macdonald & Co Ltd, 16 Maddox Street, London Wl; illustrated, 35s), on one of the world's great fighting aeroplanes. The same author has also most ably told the fascinating story of Hawker aircraft—in Hawker Aircraft Since 1920 (Putnam, 42 Great Russell Street, London WC1; illustrated, 63s). You would not think, at first glance, that his Hurricane study bore any relationship to a paperback by Kenneth Poolman called The Giant Killers (William Kimber & Co Ltd, 46 Wilton Place, London SW1; 2s 6d); but the heroine of the latter vivid and simply told tale is indeed the Hawker Hurricane, in one of its many oper ational roles—aboard the CAM-ships, merchant ships that cata pulted aircraft to protect convoys. Again, a relationship between the titles 1,000 Destroyed and War Planes of the Second World War —Fighters, Vol IV: United States, Yugoslavia may not at first glance seem obvious; but there is a complementary character about these books. The first-named, by Grover C. Hall, Jr, tells a person alized story of "the life and times" of the US 4th Fighter Group, based at Debden, which destroyed over a thousand aircraft in European operations (Putnam; illustrated, 50s). In the second (Macdonald & Co; illustrated, 9s 6d) William Green describes the aircraft the group used—Mustangs and Thunderbolts—among descriptions of many more US fighting aircraft. The same indefat igable historian has also produced a useful work in the same series on Flying Boats (Macdonald & Co; illustrated, 10s 6d). Similar studies of categories of fighting aircraft—and of the men who flew them—have been published recently, some taking stock of the present and some of the past. There is for example Ginger Lacey—Fighter Pilot, a book in which Richard Townshend Bickers tells the story of one of the RAF's most successful, but not very well-known, fighter pilots, who as a sergeant pilot had destroyed 23 enemy aircraft by late 1941 (Robert Hale Ltd, 63 Old Brompton Road, London SW7; illustrated, 16s). Some of his fighting pre decessors of a generation earlier are recalled in Sky Fighters of World War 1 (a Fawcett Book, distributed by Frederick Muller Ltd, Ludgate House, 110 Fleet Street, London EC4; illustrated, 5s), in which various writers tell of aces on both sides—Garros. Mannock, Udet, Elliott White Springs and others (but curiously, no Richthofen). Some of the aircraft these men flew are recalled in The Fighter Aircraft Pocketbook, by Roy Cross (B. T. Batsford Ltd, 4 Fitzhardinge Street, Portman Square, London Wl; illus trated, 9s 6d), which traces fighter aircraft from the Bristol Scout and Nieuport 17 to the Lightning and Mirage. Another Batsford book, in their British Battles Series, is Basil Collier's concise The Battle of Britain (illustrated, 21s). In his study of contemporary warplanes, Combat Aircraft of the World (Temple Press Books. Bowling Green Lane, London EC1; illustrated, 21s), F. G. Swan- borougn deals with military types currently, or until recently, in production; by contrast, in their special study of the German 1914-18 R-planes—The German Giants—G. W. Haddow and Peter M. Grosz take a close look at tne biggest aircraft ever used to bomb England (Putnam; illustrated, 84s). The term "R-planes" derives from Riesenflugzeug—"giant aircraft." Although the design of modern aircraft is too complex to be the work of any one man, a great designer stamps his mark— and, in Russia, his name—on an aircraft. Thus Alexander Yakov- lev's aeroplanes are known by the prefix Yak, and it is interesting to read in his Notes of an Aircraft Designer (Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow; illustrated, 4s) something about his upbringing and experiences. In 1936 he came to Britain and watched the RAF display at Hendon. Yakovlev speaks highly of R. J. Mitchell, whose prototype Spitfire he saw there. Writing about the Schneider Trophy designs he comments, "A very modest person, Mitchell put forward all his efforts to win the international races without a thought of glorifying himself." The Spitfire figures, of course, in Gerald Pollinger's Famous Aircraft of the World (Fred erick Muller Ltd; illustrated, 10s 6d), as do many other famous types from the Wright Flyer to the North American X-15. One of Yakovlev's predecessors, and one of R. J. Mitchell's too (in the broadest possible sense), was Leonardo da Vinci. Although none of his flying projects came to practical fruition, this great artist and thinker clearly foresaw the aircraft. In The World of Leonardo da Vinci (Macdonald & Co; illustrated, 45s) Dr Ivor B. Hart devotes a whole chapter to da Vinci's aeronautical designs, stressing the mental and physical climate in which Leonardo worked, and commenting that he was "entirely obsessed with the feeling that the solution [to the problems of artificial flight by man] lay in the direction of flapping flight." All through the history of aviation there have been men who found the air the ideal sort of element for the expression of their personality, or who devoted their lives and skill to the mastery of
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