Floatplanes: War Planes of the Second World War, Volume Six

War Planes Of The Second World War (Green) #6

by William Green, Dennis I. Punnett (Illustrator )

As with flying boats, floatplanes of the Second World War were little publicised, although their tasks ranged from interception and torpedo-bombing to shipboard reconnaissance and patrol. The floatplanes of the Luftwaffe proved particularly troublesome in the Channel and North Sea during the early war years. Floatplanes provided the eyes of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific where the Japanese – perhaps the leading exponents of floatplane design – used such aircraft extensively, and they were employed to some extent by every major combatant. This volumes includes details, photographs, and drawings of more than sixty types of floatplanes produced by a dozen countries.

207 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1963

About the author

Adapted from Wikipedia:
William Green (1927 – 2 January 2010) was an aviation and military author, following service with Britain's Royal Air Force, where he wrote for the Air Training Corps Gazette (later to be become the Air Pictorial).
Green was Technical Director to the RAF Flying Review, and then Editorial Director when it became Flying Review International. In 1971 he and Gordon Swanborough jointly created the monthly Air International, of which he remained Managing Editor until late 1990.
Green edited numerous editions of Observers book of Aircraft and spent most of his adult life doing research and writing on aircraft and aviation. His work Warplanes of the Third Reich is seen as a classic aviation publication. Along with Gordon Swanborough, he also wrote several books for Salamander Books including The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Worlds Commercial Aircraft, Illustrated Anatomy of the World's Fighters and Flying Colours.

Reviews

[Daniel Rex · Rating 5 out of 5]

William Green is known to be the best writer about World War II combat aircraft, and this series of compact but detailed handbooks cemented his reputation in the early 1960s. In this Volume 6 he focusses with meticulous detail on a group of Seaplanes known as "Floatplanes" - aircraft that can land and take off on water because they have fixed "floats", one, two or more on which to land. The biggest use of such aircraft militarily was firstly to launch them via catapult from warships like Battleships and Cruisers for reconnaissance and gunnery spotting, then recover them with a crane when they returned and landed on the water beside the parent ship. Aircraft carriers tended to cover this need to a large extent in the Pacific, but the versatility of floatplanes for Coastal reconnaissance, anti-submarine patrols, convoy protection and shadowing, torpedo bombing and minelaying, air sea rescue remained important throughout WW2 and these aircraft could use sheltered coastal waters, lakes, rivers and even open ocean for operations where no land airfields were established. What impressed me greatly about this book is that these aircraft are often neglected. We know of the famous Arado 196 and He 115, leaders in their fields, and the Japanese were perhaps supreme in this field with their Aichi E13A1 "Jake" and some useful floatplane fighters as well.
The British and USA had well performed floatplanes such as the Seafox and Swordfish Floatplanes while the US is famous for the Grumman Duck and Vought Kingfisher. Green however delves with equal detail into the odd looking French and Italian designs, 3 Yugoslavian Floatplanes (2 of which were Trainers), and the smart looking Dutch Fokker T.VIII-W, a twin engined floatplane that saw service with Coastal Command (UK) and Germany after the Dutch surrender.