Author: Tim McLelland Publisher: Fonthill Media ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 589
Book Description
Britain’s Cold War Bombers explores the creation and development of the jet bomber, tracing the emergence of the first jet designs (the Valiant and Vulcan) through to the first-generation jets which entered service with the R.A.F. and Fleet Air Arm. Each aircraft type will be examined, looking at how the design was created and how this translated into an operational aircraft. The basic development and service history of each type will be examined, with a narrative which links the linear appearance of each new design, leading to the present day and the latest generation of Typhoon aircraft. Other aircraft types explored will include the Canberra, Sperrin, Victor, Scimitar, Buccaneer, Nimrod, Phantom, Sea Harrier, Jaguar, Tornado GR1/4 and Typhoon. Illustrations: 200 black-and-white and 50 color photographs
Author: Damien Burke Publisher: Crowood ISBN: 184797791X Category : Transportation Languages : en Pages : 637
Book Description
More than forty years after its cancellation, the BAC TSR2 is still a controversial aircraft. Years ahead of its time, it was abruptly cancelled by a new government when flight testing had ony just begun. Built to a demanding RAF requirement , the BAC TSR2 was a revolutionary low-level strike aircraft able to deliver a tactical nuclear weapon at supersonic speed and low altitude to evade enemy radar. This fascinating new book describes in detail the aircraft, its history and the events of its cancellation. Many hitherto unseen photographs and diagrams support the detailed text, which benefits from extensive research in the BAC archives and access to newly rediscovered material.
Author: S. J. Ball Publisher: Routledge Revivals ISBN: 9780367290399 Category : Languages : en Pages : 254
Book Description
Between 1945 and 1960, Great Britain constructed a substantial nuclear-armed bomber force. The creation of this force had ramifications that extended well beyond the confines of military policy. The process played a large part in defining relations with the United States, and the belief that these bombers could replace conventional forces convinced successive British governments that Great Britain could maintain a significant global military role. Originally published in 1995 and drawing on both archives and oral testimony, this book analyses British strategic discourse and its influence on British foreign policy in the early decades of the Cold War.
Author: Tim McLelland Publisher: ISBN: 9781910809136 Category : BAC TSR 2 (Jet attack plane) Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This is a welcome revised and enhanced second editionof this comprehensive, accurate and honest account of the TSR2 strike aircraft's fascinating story, tracing the project's development from its Cold War origins in the 1950's to its final cancellation in 1965. Aimed at aviation historians and those interested in the history of military technology, the book examines the RAF's TSR2 project in detail, eliminating the many myths and misconceptions that have surrounded this aircraft for decades. Although much has been written about the TSR2's history, a great deal of misinformation has been published on this subject which this book dismisses presenting the reader with a complete and realistic overview of the entire project. This book deals with the facts and not the emotion, speculation and fantasy which has plagued the subject for so long. It presents a detailed, factual and very readable account of the development and subsequent demise of TSR2 project. For this new edition an additional chapter concerning the F-111K, extracts from the TSR2 Crew Manual and other declassified technical TSR2 documentation, has been provided by Tony Buttler, the author of our respected British Secret Projects series who has researched this era of British military aviation for many years.
Author: Brett Holman Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317022637 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 303
Book Description
In the early twentieth century, the new technology of flight changed warfare irrevocably, not only on the battlefield, but also on the home front. As prophesied before 1914, Britain in the First World War was effectively no longer an island, with its cities attacked by Zeppelin airships and Gotha bombers in one of the first strategic bombing campaigns. Drawing on prewar ideas about the fragility of modern industrial civilization, some writers now began to argue that the main strategic risk to Britain was not invasion or blockade, but the possibility of a sudden and intense aerial bombardment of London and other cities, which would cause tremendous destruction and massive casualties. The nation would be shattered in a matter of days or weeks, before it could fully mobilize for war. Defeat, decline, and perhaps even extinction, would follow. This theory of the knock-out blow from the air solidified into a consensus during the 1920s and by the 1930s had largely become an orthodoxy, accepted by pacifists and militarists alike. But the devastation feared in 1938 during the Munich Crisis, when gas masks were distributed and hundreds of thousands fled London, was far in excess of the damage wrought by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz in 1940 and 1941, as terrible as that was. The knock-out blow, then, was a myth. But it was a myth with consequences. For the first time, The Next War in the Air reconstructs the concept of the knock-out blow as it was articulated in the public sphere, the reasons why it came to be so widely accepted by both experts and non-experts, and the way it shaped the responses of the British public to some of the great issues facing them in the 1930s, from pacifism to fascism. Drawing on both archival documents and fictional and non-fictional publications from the period between 1908, when aviation was first perceived as a threat to British security, and 1941, when the Blitz ended, and it became clear that no knock-out blow was coming, The Next War in the Air provides a fascinating insight into the origins and evolution of this important cultural and intellectual phenomenon, Britain's fear of the bomber.
Author: Tim McLelland Publisher: Fonthill Media ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 605
Book Description
Britain’s Cold War Fighters explores the creation and development of the jet fighter, tracing the emergence of the first jet designs (the Meteor and Vampire) through to the first-generation jets which entered service with the RAF and Fleet Air Arm. Each aircraft type will be examined, looking at how the design was created and how this translated into an operational aircraft. The basic development and service history of each type will be examined, with a narrative that links the linear appearance of each new design, leading to the present day and the latest generation of Typhoon aircraft. Other aircraft types explored will include Hunter, Lightning, Phantom, Javelin and Tornado F2/3. A beautiful and comprehensive study of the UK’s design and manufacture of its fighter programme from the end of the Second World War to present, Britain’s Cold War Fighters is of much importance to aviation and military historians, modellers as well as those interested in the growing popularity of the Cold War. Highly illustrated with many unpublished photos, interviews and eyewitness accounts, this an ideal companion piece to Fonthill Media’s Britain’s Cold War Bombers and is the subject of a BBC documentary currently in commission.
Author: Jeffrey A. Engel Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674263308 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 374
Book Description
In a gripping story of international power and deception, Jeffrey Engel reveals the “special relationship” between the United States and Great Britain in a new and far more competitive light. As allies, they fought communism. As rivals, they locked horns over which would lead the Cold War fight. In the quest for sovereignty and hegemony, one important key was airpower, which created jobs, forged ties with the developing world, and, perhaps most importantly in a nuclear world, ensured military superiority.Only the United States and Britain were capable of supplying the post-war world’s ravenous appetite for aircraft. The Americans hoped to use this dominance as a bludgeon not only against the Soviets and Chinese, but also against any ally that deviated from Washington’s rigid brand of anticommunism. Eager to repair an economy shattered by war and never as committed to unflinching anticommunism as their American allies, the British hoped to sell planes even beyond the Iron Curtain, reaping profits, improving East-West relations, and garnering the strength to withstand American hegemony.Engel traces the bitter fights between these intimate allies from Europe to Latin America to Asia as each sought control over the sale of aircraft and technology throughout the world. The Anglo–American competition for aviation supremacy affected the global balance of power and the fates of developing nations such as India, Pakistan, and China. But without aviation, Engel argues, Britain would never have had the strength to function as a brake upon American power, the way trusted allies should.
Author: Tony Redding Publisher: Grub Street Publishing ISBN: 1911714619 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 353
Book Description
A sobering and necessary read for all those interested in Cold War history. Much has been written about the V-bombers – the Valiant, Victor and Vulcan – but virtually nothing has been said about their strategic nuclear strike role. How would Britain’s small force of subsonic bombers have retaliated following a Soviet attack? Would they have succeeded in visiting thermonuclear catastrophe on their Soviet targets? V-Bombers: Britain’s Nuclear Frontline is the first detailed account of the operational capability and credibility of Britain’s airborne nuclear deterrent during the peak years of the Cold War. This book is the product of six years of research by the author, Dr Tony Redding. It includes a great deal of fresh material on V-force weapons, war mission, targeting, vulnerabilities and tactics for attacking targets within Soviet Russia. Over 70 V-force aircrew and ground crew were interviewed and over 300 operational research reports and other official documents were reviewed. This book demonstrates how the V-bombers retained a unilateral capacity to destroy the largest cities in the Soviet Union until the handover of the strategic nuclear deterrent to the Polaris submarines in 1969. It concludes that a small force of surviving V-bombers could have unleashed the explosive power of all Allied bombs dropped on Germany in six years of war, but in the space of the first two hours of World War 3. A sobering thought and a fascinating and necessary read for all those interested in this period of history.
Author: Tim McLelland
Author: Damien Burke
Author: S. J. Ball
Author: Tim McLelland
Author: Brett Holman
Author: CHRIS. SANDHAM-BAILEY
Author: Tim McLelland
Author: Jeffrey A. Engel
Author: Tony Redding
Author: Bob Clarke