The Aviation Historian No.18 has a well illustrated article on Sea Furies awaiting their fate at Lossiemouth in 1962 and the frightening story behind one of Cyril Peckham’s spectacular 1953 Hunter photographs. No 19 has a piece about building a model of The Last of the Many in its blue air racing livery, the full contents, implications and consequences of Duncan Sandy’s 1957 Defence White Paper and the story of the Fury biplane prototype, the Hornet. All these are of direct interest to Hawker people but, of course, there are dozens of other fascinating aviation articles, all beautifully illustrated.
Hawker P.1127 and Harrier.
Another outstanding book by Tony Buttler about “developing the world’s first jet V/STOL combat aircraft” as it is subtitled. This beautifully produced, landscape format book is 152 pages of joy for people like us; and it’s dedicated “To the design and flight-test teams at Kingston and Bristol who made all this possible.” It is a technically biased history, for once, starting with Wibault’s Gyroptere and following Ralph Hooper’s and Gordon Lewis’s design and development work from the initial P.1127 and BE.48 concepts through the BE.53 and Pegasus, Kestrel and P.1127(RAF) to the Harrier GRMk1, pausing to examine the P.1154 and other early Kingston V/STOL projects.
The book is illustrated with well produced black and white photographs and original Hawker GA drawings and diagrams augmented by a central colour section.
One appendix gives basic aircraft data and a second is a comprehensive photograph album of Kestrel XS690 which will interest modellers as well as engineers. The author lists his sources, the great majority of which are original primary documents, and provides indices by people, aircraft, organisations and ships. John Farley has written the Foreword. Published by The History Press (ISBN 978 7509 6530 9) at £20, this is a reliable account.