The Speed Seekers

Ref: 4401

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{detailed description}This is a book about aeroplanes and speed—the lure of la vitesse pure, its challenge and mystique—but primarily it is a book about the men who were inspired by speed's insistent call. Although it is a story about men's successes it does not neglect their failures, which were sometimes dramatic, occasionally fatal, but always instructive.
At the close of World War I the new sword of air power was being forged, and at its edge air racing was replacing air combat as the competitive incentive which would advance aero technology. In 1918 the fastest aeroplanes were capable of little more than 140 mph, yet just six years later man had doubled this capability: the 1924 speed record was raised to virtually 280 mph by Florentin Bonnet in the Bernard SIMB V.2. How had this remarkable achievement come about ? The Speed Seekers documents a technological growth, together with its myriad sources, which fostered results in terms of increasing speed unequaled in any similar time span up until the birth of the jet age. During the turbulent inter-war years the world speed record became very much a matter of national prestige and the air races of that period are still remembered with reverence today.
The simultaneous events in France, the United States, Great Britain, and Italy are related with equal perception and the classic speedplanes of all four nations—together with the men who shared their destiny—are celebrated in this definitive volume. With its unique tables of aircraft and engine performance data complementing scrupulously researched text, this extensively illustrated book is a magnificent chronicle of one of aviation's brightest eras.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Thomas G. Foxworth
Macdonald and Janes 1975 1st edn. 560pp profusely illustrated with b&w photos, 3-view drawings etc. index, appendices. 29x25 landscape
{condition}very good in slightly torn d/j.
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