Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft Since 1913

Ref: 5352

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{detailed description}By the time the great engineering firm of Armstrong Whitworth became concerned with aircraft in 1913 it had already reached a leading position among the world's shipbuilders and armament manufacturers: but it was, in the end, the aviation business which kept the famous name alive after the depredations which followed the post-war slump of the 1920s. With the closure in 1919 of the original 'aircraft department' in Newcastle upon Tyne, the centre of activity moved to Coventry, and Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft since 1913 describes the little-known facts behind this transfer of control.
The main purpose of the book, however, is to describe in detail the great variety of aircraft which bore the Armstrong Whitworth name; these included such well-known types as the veteran F.K.8 biplane of 1916 and the Whitley bomber of the Second World War, as well as the Siskin and the Atlas which served in large numbers with the peace-time RAF. Also described are the company's passenger transports; the three-engined Argosy of 1926, the first of Imperial Airways' airliners to pay its way; the four-engined Atalanta monoplane built in 1932 for the Empire routes, and the larger Ensign of 1938 which, at first, looked as though it might be a failure, but which survived to play a valiant part as a wartime transport.
Not so well known are some of the Armstrong Whitworth oddities dealt with in the book, such as the quaint quadruplane of 1916, the almost equally freakish 'variable geometry' Ape biplane of 1926 and the highly sophisticated A.W.52 `flying wing' aircraft with boundary-layer control and a laminar-flow wing section tested in 1947. Included, also, is a chapter dealing with the airship activities of Armstrong Whitworth, which ranged from the building of a diminutive car for the early naval airship HMA2, to the construction in 1919 of Great Britain's most successful rigid airship, the R-33. Appendices contain production figures and serial numbers or registration marks for some 11,150 aircraft built by the firm, and particulars are given, in many cases for the first time, of numerous unbuilt Armstrong Whitworth projects.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Oliver Tapper
1973 1st edition
{condition}near fine in price clipped d/j
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