Archive for Items Categorized 'Aviation', only excerpts shown, click title for full entry.

Something Quite Exceptional: Hugh Easton and the Battle of Britain Memorial Window for Rolls-Royce

by Adam Goodyear

Many aircraft have been, and are, powered by Rolls-Royce engines. In the WWII context it is of course the Spitfire with its Merlin engine that tops the list. It played a pivotal role in the Battle of Britain, where, against formidable odds the pilots of the planes it powered turned the tides of war.

Race to the Sky: The Wright Brothers Versus the United States Government

by Stephen B Goddard

It is positively exciting to think that only three short years lie between the Wrights launching an unmanned kite/glider, then strapping themselves to it, learning by trial and error how to control it, and then, in 1903, achieving mankind’s first powered, controlled, heavier-than-air flight.

Orville’s Aviators: Outstanding Alumni of the Wright Flying School, 1910–1916

by John Carver Edwards

Kitty Hawk is the location that has so lastingly become associated with the Wright brothers’ aviation triumphs but Greene County, Ohio is where most of the actual development and flying—and training—took place.

The Space Shuttle Program: How NASA Lost Its Way

by R. Michael Gordon

Even if everyone in the record crowd of 750,000+ that attended NASA’s 135th and final launch in July 2011 had paid $10 admittance, all that money wouldn’t put much of a dent into the $3 billion annual shuttle bill.

Pistons to Blades : Small Gas Turbine Developments  by the Rover Company

by Mark C S Barnard

A gas turbine-powered Bentley in the late 1940s? Could have happened! The background to this book is the swap of Rover’s jet engine work for Rolls-Royce’s Meteor tank engine program in 1943.

German Aircraft Industry and Production 1933–1945

by Vajda & Dancey

This book is a compilation of statistical data gathered from German archives and previously published material. While the book is certainly not for everyone, it does contain a huge quantity of information. The authors’ conclusions in Chapter 12 on why Germany was destined to lose the air war are alone worth the price of the book.

Rolls-Royce Hillington: Portrait of a Shadow Factory

by Peter Sherrard

Preparing for WWII, the Shadow Factory scheme was the British Government’s attempt to guard against the possible loss of key industrial sites, in this case the Rolls-Royce factory at Derby. The Hillington plant on the outskirts of Glasgow was Rolls-Royce’s first site in Scotland and, in addition to the factory at Crewe, the second Shadow Factory.

Around-the-World Flights: A History

by Patrick M Stinson

It’s all relative. To an SR-71 Blackbird pilot who’s clocked 2000+ mph zipping around the globe in about 11 hours the 530-odd mph your average commercial jet achieves are boringly slow. Only 55 years before the fastest recorded SR-71 flight, pilots on the first around-the-world challenge (1921) were given 100 days to make the trip.

Lady’s Men: The Story of World War II’s Mystery Bomber and Her Crew

by Mario Martinez

Martinez is the first to accept that his book is at odds, sometimes sharply so, with other accounts on certain vital points. Even so, his conclusions about an American bomber that simply vanished one night in the Libyan Desert in 1943 after its first and only combat mission have never been seriously challenged by anyone.

Engine Revolutions: The Autobiography of Max Bentele

by Max Bentele

This German mechanical engineer/scientist used extensive hands-on testing and mathematical analysis of the resulting data to systematically track down problems in engines and to analyze the viability of proposed new engine concepts. He became an expert in gas sealing, starting his jet engine education by solving the exploding blade problem.

The Royal Air Force at Home: The History of RAF Air Displays from 1920

by Ian Smith Watson

In democracies the military is usually financed by the public in the form of taxation. Few people like to pay taxes, especially if the money goes towards something abstract or, in the case of military spending, something morally dubious.

A suitably rousing aerial display may change minds.

Combat in the Sky: The Art of Air Warfare

by Philip Handleman

It would be only too natural for any sensitive reader’s blood pressure to rise at seeing the words art and warfare in the same sentence. Fear not, Handleman himself is acutely aware of this tension and devotes a considerable amount of grey matter to addressing it.

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