British Built Aircraft

First in a series of five volumes about British aircraft, this book provides a complete record of aircraft construction in Greater London at famous sites such as Cricklewood, Croydon, Hanworth, Hayes, Hendon, Heston, Kingston upon Thames, and Stag Lane. The aim of the series is to record British aircraft manufacture in nearly all of its manifestations, in the form of a regional survey of the United Kingdom. The scope of this volume extends to all concerns within the Greater London area involved in the manufacture of complete aircraft since the very first aircraft were flown in Britain.

Second in a series of five volumes about British aircraft, this book provides a complete record of aircraft construction in South West and Central Southern England. The aim of the series is to record British aircraft manufacture in nearly all of its manifestations, in the form of a regional survey of the United Kingdom.

The British Aircraft Corporation was formed from The Bristol Aeroplane Company, English Electric, Vickers-Armstrong and Hunting in 1960. In its short, seventeen-year, life, the British Aircraft Corporation built some of the most important aircraft and missiles of the 1960s, 1970s and beyond: its best-known products included the Jaguar and Tornado warplanes, Rapier missile and One-Eleven airliner. It was also responsible for the stillborn TSR2 strike aircraft, the 1965 cancellation of which remains controversial to this day. Most famously, the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic airliner came from the BAC stable. BAC was subsumed into British Aerospace (now BAE Systems) in 1977, but many of its products remain in service to this day. This book tells their complete story.

A history of British built aircraft

Last in a series of five volumes about British aircraft, this book provides a complete record of aircraft construction in Northern England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The aim of the series is to record British aircraft manufacture in nearly all of its manifestations, in the form of a regional survey of the United Kingdom.

Third in a series of five volumes about British aircraft, this book provides a complete record of aircraft construction in South East England. Every manufacturer, no matter how small, in South East England (excluding Greater London) is recorded here, along with many previously unpublished images of the aircraft designed and built in the South East. The aim of the series is to record British aircraft manufacture in nearly all of its manifestations, in the form of a regional survey of the United Kingdom.

“The rich and diverse history of the British aircraft industry is captured in superb detail by the author in this weighty tome.” —Aviation News Great Britain’s aircraft industry started in 1908, with the first formally registered organization in the world to offer to design and build an aeroplane “for commercial gain.” This book tells the complete story of the 110 years since the start, all the companies formed and the aircraft they produced, highlighting the advances in aeronautical ambition and technology. It is the story of the creation, survival and decline of all one hundred and twenty-three of the aircraft design and construction companies formed between 1908 and 2018. The exhilaration of success and the magic of aviation technology are vividly illustrated by the technical and political birth stories of iconic projects, such as the Cirrus/Gypsy Moths, the Tiger Moth, the flying boats of Imperial Airways, Spitfire, Lancaster, Viscount, Vulcan, Harrier, Buccaneer and many more. The rotary wing industry is not forgotten. The birth of the jet turbine engine and the quest for supersonic speed is included. The stories of the disappointments of failure and disaster, such as the Brabazon, Comet, Princess, Rotodyne and TSR-2, and the growth of international collaboration in Concorde, Tornado, Airbus, Eurofighter Typhoon and other projects are included, in the context of the international scene and domestic politics. The conclusion highlights the prominent reminiscences and speculates on the future of the aircraft industry in Britain. “An outstanding reference book and a thoroughly enjoyable canter through the decades, from the days of wood and fabric to the modern composite structure of the wings of the A400 Atlas.” —RAF Historical Society

Heroes and Landmarks of British Aviation tells the dramatic story of a world leading aviation industry, from the sweat and grease of the workshop, to the board rooms and government nationalisations that ultimately fashioned its destiny.The heroes are Britains most innovative aviation pioneers and their aircraft, the men and women who persevered to be the first into the air, to fly the fastest, the highest and the furthest. This broad and highly accessible books ranges from the first man to fly across the English Channel from England to France to the development of the Spitfire and from the disastrous R101 airship to the development of the jet engine and ultimately the worlds first supersonic airliner.Each chapter looks at a different aviation pioneer and the flying machines that they designed, their engineering landmarks, their triumphs in the air and on occasion their disasters too. The book explores the great air races that were won and lost, the government contracts and political short-sightedness that cut short the development of leading aircraft designs and many of the dramatic air raids and sea battles from the First World War to the Falklands and the Middle East.Many of the industrys most prominent names are profiled, including Ernest Willows, the Short brothers, Geoffrey de Havilland, Vincent Richmond, George White, Thomas Sopwith, Harry Hawker, RJ Mitchell, Herbert Smith, Charles Rolls, Henry Royce, Reginald Pierson, Alliott Verdon-Roe, Frederick Handley Page, Robert Watson-Watt, Robert Blackburn and Frank Whittle.Behind the personal stories are the histories of the aircraft companies that these pioneers created, from those that went bankrupt to those that lasted the test of time and have become indivisible from British aviation folklore, such names as Sopwith, Handley Page, Avro, Supermarine, Blackburn, Bristol, Fairey and Rolls-Royce. The book covers the mergers and acquisitions that led to the creation of two major aircraft manufacturers, Hawker Siddeley Group and the British Aircraft Corporation, and how barely two decades later, before the century was out, they were nationalised to form British Aerospace.