British Naval Aircraft since 1912

by Owen Thetford

Book by Thetford, Owen

512 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1958

Reviews

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful reference book in terms of purely objective data (how fast the aircraft was, what it looked like, etc.) but Thetford is extremely generous in his assessment of virtually every aircraft in the book, and glosses over a lot of bad points. The Fairey Barracuda, for instance, was designed as a torpedo bomber but was too underpowered to carry a torpedo(!) so it became a dive bomber, but it was too heavy to dive safely, so it be became a glide bomber, and then it turned out to occasionally crash for no reason and was expeditiously replaced by American-built Avengers, but Thetford calls it "on the whole successful".