Empire of the Couds

[Simpo Two]

'Empire of the Clouds: When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World' - another book for the nostalgics:

www.amazon.co.uk/Empire-Clouds-Britains-Aircraft-R...

[Fat Albert]

Yes, very good, got it for Christmas, goes well with Vulcan test Pilot by Tony Blackman which tells some of the same stories from a different angle and involves some of the same characters

[eharding]

A cracking read.

Highly recommend getting hold of a copy of W.A.Waterton's "The Quick and the Dead", one of the primary references.

[Eric Mc]

Veru good book - and quite hard hitting in places.

[MattYorke]

Certainly an enjoyable and insightful read, however it is quite one sided on it's arguments and rarely provides "the other side" for the sake of balance. Tends to focus on the negative elements of our aero industry, but looking back at some of the aircraft we produced, while the f**k ups clearly did all occur, somehow we hung it all together and produced some cracking planes as well, and sometimes I think that point is lost.

[Eric Mc]

MattYorke said:

Certainly an enjoyable and insightful read, however it is quite one sided on it's arguments and rarely provides "the other side" for the sake of balance. Tends to focus on the negative elements of our aero industry, but looking back at some of the aircraft we produced, while the f**k ups clearly did all occur, somehow we hung it all together and produced some cracking planes as well, and sometimes I think that point is lost.

He could have written an identical book on the French aircraft industry,

[MattYorke]

For sure - or many other countries for that matter - but we're most interested in the British ones, right? ;o)

[Eric Mc]

Of course.

And it si a good book. Highly recommended.

[speedtwelve]

Part-way through it at the moment. I was reading it in parallel with Winkle Brown's 'Wings on my Sleeve'. TSR2 etc has been discussed before, but BOACs part in allegedly decimating the UK airliner industry by playing silly buggers with Vickers contracts was news to me. I suppose you could argue that amends were partly made with BEA Trident orders later on.

[Dr Jekyll]

speedtwelve said:

Part-way through it at the moment. I was reading it in parallel with Winkle Brown's 'Wings on my Sleeve'. TSR2 etc has been discussed before, but BOACs part in allegedly decimating the UK airliner industry by playing silly buggers with Vickers contracts was news to me. I suppose you could argue that amends were partly made with BEA Trident orders later on.

Only after BEA had buggered up the Trident.

[Eric Mc]

The sorry tale of the British airliner industry is another story worthy of a book. Although people like to blame the national airlines and the government for the problems that afflicted British airliner designs, the manufacturers themselves were probably their own worst enemies - and perhaps were always going to end up with unsellable types - with just the odd exceptional sales success here and there.

[Simpo Two]

It may be the case that post-war Britain couldn't market itself for toffee. The Empire had let us grow accustomed to the idea that we could simply pump stuff out and somebody would buy it - but the world post-WW2 was very different.

[Eric Mc]

That was the basic atitude. Also, the airliner manufacturers tended to respond to Government specifications for the national airlines, This obviously limited the attractability of any given design to other airlines. Indeed, it also caused problems when the national airlines themselves changed their minds as to the types of aircraft they wanted - which they did far too often.

That usually left the constructor with an aeroplane NOBODY wanted and the taxpayer holding the baby.

[The Hypno-Toad]

Just finished reading this too. Thought it was very good and quite page turning. Seemed to skimp a little on things like the Saunders Roe rocket fighter debacle but was good at reminding you about things like the Short Seamew.