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Airspeed Aircraft Since 1931

Airspeed Aircraft Since 1931

Ref: 5354

In stock

Price: £30.00

sadly, flyingbooks is now closed.

{detailed description}During the twenty years of its life as an independent or quasi-independent company, Airspeed designed and made a dozen different aircraft, excluding many variants. Nearly all of them were either outstandingly advanced in design for their time, or especially ingenious, and two, the twin-engined Oxford trainer and the Horsa troop- and vehicle-carrying glider, were produced in very large numbers before and during World War II. In addition, Airspeed worked on many projects, some of which were as technically interesting as the dozen aircraft types which were actually built.
The book does more than simply describe the aircraft and most of the projects — some fifty in all — using photographs and general arrangement drawings as appropriate. It also gives much of the history and thinking behind the designs, describes some of the long-forgotten incidents involved in development flying and supports these narratives with a detailed, human history of the company and its earlier and later vicissitudes and problems.
The author, who has been directly concerned with aviation since 1934 as a journalist and wartime test and ferry pilot, was a member of the staff of Airspeed during the five years in which the Ambassador/Elizabethan airliner was being developed, built and tested. Consequently he knows much of the inside story, some of which has never before been told, of the problems and minor technical disasters which bedevilled the development of this advanced medium-haul piston-engined airliner. He describes these and explains the reasons for the year-late delivery to B E A and for the final decision by the de Havilland Company and Airspeed to cut their losses, make only the twenty Elizabethans for B E A and give up ideas for the further development of this, the last Airspeed aircraft, in four-turbo-prop-engined form. Of equal importance and interest in a different way is the near first-hand information included about test-development crises and the way in which these were overcome.
Because he flew the type as a test and ferry pilot, the author is also able to write with some knowledge about the flying characteristics of the Oxford and has had access to some wind-tunnel test and other reports by the RAE on lesser-known aircraft developed and produced by Airspeed.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by H. A. Taylor
1970 1st edition. 206pp
{condition}small gift inscription to front free end-paper, otherwise very good in price clipped d/j.
{delivery info}
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U.K.tracked
first class (1-2 days)£4.75
second class (2-3 days)£4.25


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