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Find out moreSee below for a selection of the latest books from Aircraft: general interest category. Presented with a red border are the Aircraft: general interest books that have been lovingly read and reviewed by the experts at Lovereading. With expert reading recommendations made by people with a passion for books and some unique features Lovereading will help you find great Aircraft: general interest books and those from many more genres to read that will keep you inspired and entertained. And it's all free!
A unique insight into the UK air-ambulance service, with the aim of raising awareness of the remarkable work carried out by the services, and the effort required behind the scenes to ensure the successful, safe and efficient operation of helicopters and crew around the country. This book looks at the history of air ambulance services, the various different models for their structure, how they are funded, organised and run, the helicopters used and the roles of crew members and support staff, with case studies of typical missions undertaken. Written with the cooperation of Haynes' local air ambulance service - Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance - a donation from each copy sold will be made to the national Air Ambulances UK charity.
Strap yourself in an prepare for take off! This is a first: a flying course for children who relish the detail of dials, widgets and flight panels, and who dream of one day becoming airborne. Using plenty of photographs, diagrams and illustrations, this book offers children their very own flying lessons. Covering the essential science and technology of flight, it is filled with stacks of stats and facts, and will be essential reading for all turbocharged kids in thrall to the wonder of flight.
As we came racing towards the scrap, we could see the Scouts' noses smoking with tracers, while the observers fired back. Suddenly a flame trickled along the side of a Nine, then the petrol tank burst, and she fell a blazing wreck, her wings coming off. Don't let the Hun bag the Nines - good Lord, he'll bag the lot, if we don't stop him, I thought. Gripping and immediate, Williams' vivid descriptions of his raids over the German Rhinelands and Schwartzwald at the helm of his D.H.4 place the reader right in the air with him, relaying the thoughts running through his mind in real time as events unfolded around him. The account begins when the test pilot was stationed with 55 Squadron in Nancy in early 1918, and ends when he is sent home to England, with a Croix de Guerre and a DFC to his name - as fate would have it just as his dearest friend was killed in action. These remarkable memoirs lay undisturbed in a trunk for many years.
In 2000, the Fleet Air Arm Museum conservation team embarked on an ambitious project to explore what remained of any original paintwork and markings on its WW2 Corsair fighter aircraft. The painstaking, inch-by-inch removal of a 1960s paint layer from the whole aircraft slowly revealed that the entire aircraft remained authentic and original in its 1940s wartime condition. The detailed forensic approach allowed the valuable and (many) unique details to be studied and preserved, allowing the team to chart the aircraft's history from factory to end of Royal Navy service. A unique and fascinating project that resulted in a true time capsule being exposed and preserved.
In August 1963, one of the best-selling aircraft of British civil aviation, the BAC One-Eleven, took to the skies for the first time. With an order book for sixty aircraft, more than half were from the United States, which was an unprecedented situation for a British civil aircraft. The first project for the newly formed British Aircraft Corporation, the One-Eleven was wholly designed and built by BAC, and remained in production throughout the entire seventeen-year history of the organisation, performing strongly even when profits were at a low. After flying commercially in Europe for the last time in March 2002, here the One-Eleven is celebrated in style fifty years after its maiden flight. In this revised edition, Stephen Skinner combines original research with fascinating black-and-white and colour images, as well as detailed appendices, to consider what transpired in those five decades and the place the One-Eleven holds in British aviation history.
In the autumn of 1910, when he was twenty-two years old, Tommy Sopwith bought himself an aeroplane, took it to Brooklands aerodrome and taught himself to fly. In those early days he soon achieved prominence, capturing Britain's endurance and distance records - and the attention of King George V - within weeks of his first flight. He could hardly have imagined then, however, that just two years later he would be head of the Sopwith Aviation Company, nor that during the coming conflict that were to emerge from its workshops - and those of its many sub-contractors - thousands of Britain's best warplanes: the Triplane, the Snipe, the Dolphin, the Cuckoo and - most famously of all - the Sopwith Camel, credited with destroying more enemy planes than any other fighter of the First World War. He would have been even more surprised to learn that, though this first company would not long survive the end of hostilities, in its place would arise a new one which, under his guidance, was in the course of time to grow into the giant Hawker-Siddeley Group. But that is beyong the scope of this book, which focuses on those early days when a young man took up flying as a sport, only to find that he had evolved into an aviation entrepreneur.
Scotland's role in the Second World War aerial conflict is well documented, but its involvement in this field in the First World War has been largely ignored and few physical remains of First World War aerodromes survive today. Seeking to redress the balance, Malcolm Fife's detailed history charts many important bases and fields around the country. Beginning in the pre-war period, he discusses seaplane stations, airship stations, Naval, defence, training and manufacturing sites, before documenting the changes in the post-war years. From Turnhouse, near Edinburgh, and Turnberry, to Royal Naval Air Service aerodromes such as East Fortune and Donibristle, this illustrated guide will appeal to both military and aviation enthusiasts and interested locals.
In 1903 the Wright Brothers achieved their dream of powered flight and from then on man's domination of the skies became a reality. The military potential of aircraft was obvious from the outset, first as a way of spying on the enemy with reconnaissance planes and balloons armed with early cameras, and then as a way of taking the battle into the skies, as planes became weapons of war. In Britain these early days of military aviation were pioneered by a group of enthusiastic civilians and military men who were based at Lark Hill, Wiltshire where the rolling plains became ideal flying grounds. Here, the first military aviation base came into existence. Flying with the Larks charts its early days and its influence on First World War aviation.
The first in a three-volume series chronicling the location, history and fate of the many landing grounds, airfields and airports of Wales, this book focuses on the south. Starting at the English border at Chepstow and finishing in Llandovery, Ivor Jones details such diverse histories as the meadows, parks and golf courses that were used as landing grounds by the United States Army's liaison aircraft during the Second World War, the RAF stations in the Vale of Glamorgan and the long forgotten civil aerodromes of the 1930s that served to give flight to the average man.
Included are details on the ground-breaking navigation and attack system, its Cold War context, its requirements and the development of ATF (advanced terrain following), and in-depth analysis of automatic flight control systems, analogue and digital simulations at Weybridge and the reconnaissance pack for mapping enemy territory. It finishes with a look at the final throes of TSR2's cancellation by the Labour government in 1965. `This fascinating personal account of the behind the scenes action at Vickers during the heyday of British aviation and weaponry invention in the 1950s and 1960s is both authoritative and very, very readable.' Wg Cdr Al Monkman, D.F.C., M.A., B.A., R.A.F., 617 Sqn, RAF Lossiemouth, Moray.
Today it is difficult to imagine that the parishes of Hucclecote and Brockworth once were home to one of Britain's major manufacturers. Gloster Aircraft Company, with its forebears H.H.Martyn & Company and Gloucestershire Aircraft Company, produced some 10,000 aeroplanes between 1917 and 1963. It also provided employment for countless thousands of local people. During World War II alone it employed 14,000 men and women working at the main factory and at 40 sites dispersed in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Stroud and other more distant parts of Gloucestershire. Gloster designed a number of outstanding fighter aircraft which were built in large numbers; it also produced many prototypes which failed to win orders and very many more projects which never left the drawing board. By chance the company was chosen to design and build Britain's first jet aircraft and followed by building 4,000 jet fighters for the Royal Air Force and a dozen air forces around the world. Gloster finally became the first victim of a programme of political and economic stringency which has since decimated British aircraft manufacturing companies. This album portrays some of those people who worked 'up at the 'drome for GAC' and the works of their hands.
Over sixty years ago a new factory was built at Broughton to construct Wellington Bombers for the R.A.F.'s expansion and wartime needs. Situated near Chester, the factory has remained part of the British aviation industry while older, traditional sites have come and gone. Its history has been both varied and colourful and the aircraft the factory has produced have been world-renowned. From the wartime Wellingtons and Lancasters to the world's first jet airliner, the Comet, and the wings for the most successful airliners in service today, Broughton has always been at the forefront of aviation technology. Updated with new material relating to the current company overhaul and expansion following the success of the A380, this book is a testament to the phenomenal success of this Welsh factory and its successful conversion into a state-of-the-art production facility today.
