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Specifications 210 × 297 mm, 160 pages in full colour, 445 photographs, 32 artworks ISBN 978 0 946958 51 1 Price £25.00 net |
Jaguar Squadrons RICHARD L. WARD with Yves Fauconnier Foreword by Wing Commander David Sullivan OBE MSc Dick Ward’s long-awaited follow-up to Lightning Squadrons of the Royal Air Force has finally arrived, and for the first time in this long-established sequence of titles he considers a postwar combat aircraft in terms of its worldwide service across six different air arms; in this endeavour he has been able to call upon Yves Fauconnier, whose splendid photographs of Armée de l’Air aircraft are shown to advantage in the book, Simon Watson, whose collection of Indian Air Force images is well to the fore, and of course a veritable army of other photographers who have generously permitted their work to be reproduced within. Each air force covered is accorded a separate section, and the squadrons are arranged in numerical order for each nation. The author provides expert commentary on the astonishing range of colour schemes that the Jaguar has sported over the thirty-plus years since it first arrived on the scene, and highlights the various weapons fits and other equipment that it has carried during its career. Although recently retired from service with the Royal Air Force and Armée de l’Air, the Jaguar continues to be an effective weapon in the Indian and Omani armouries, and indeed is scheduled to remain so for some time yet |
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Specifications 210 × 297 mm, 248 pages (including 8 in colour), 491 photographs, 20 line drawings, 31 artworks ISBN 978 0 946958 72 6 Price £25.00 |
Fairey IIIF Interwar Military Workhorse Philip Jarrett Few interwar military aircraft gave such widespread and valuable service as the Fairey IIIF. From Great Britain to North Africa, the Middle East and Far East, it was to be found, in both landplane and seaplane form, serving at RAF and Royal Navy bases and on board aircraft carriers, capital ships and cruisers. Its versatility enabled it to perform a variety of rôles—general-purpose aircraft, ambulance, bomber, carrier-borne or catapult-launched reconnaissance seaplane, gunnery spotter and target tug and glider-target launcher. The IIIF also found military buyers in several countries, serving in Argentina, Chile, Greece and New Zealand in small numbers, and it proved useful as a test-bed for engines, silencers and naval equipment—a sure sign that it was a capable and reliable aeroplane. The greatest accolade bestowed upon the IIIF, however, was that it was the chosen mount for Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) and Prince George when they flew with the Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm. Here, Philip Jarrett, one of our foremost aviation historians, has gathered together an astonishing collection of almost 500 photographs of this versatile aircraft, the vast majority of which have come from private archives and are hitherto unpublished, and supplied an original and incisive commentary to accompany them, the whole providing the most detailed appraisal of the Fairey IIIF ever to appear in print. |
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Specifications 210 × 297 mm, 84 pages (including 4 in colour), 83 photographs, 5 line drawings, 13 artworks ISBN 978 0 946958 77 1 Price £14.95 net |
Sturgeon Target-Tug Extraordinaire Tony Buttler For every glamorous fast combat aircraft in service there is an unsung ‘workhorse’, consigned to second-line duties and frequently ignored or, at best, accorded scant attention—at least, in print. Such has been the fate of the Short Sturgeon. Conceived as a high-performance naval bomber for service in the Pacific War, it fell victim to the changed military requirements of the immediate postwar world, had its production run savagely cut and was, ultimately, redesigned so that it would operate purely as a fleet requirements aircraft. Nevertheless, it was, certainly in its original form, a handsome aircraft, and, with its twin contra-rotating propellers, powered by the ever-reliable Rolls-Royce Merlin, something of a trail-blazer inasmuch as it was the first British twin-engine aircraft specifically designed for front-line service on board aircraft carriers—a rôle that it was never, unfortunately, able to fulfil. In this book the well-known and much-respected aviation author Tony Buttler explores the technical and developmental background to the Sturgeon (and its aborted anti-submarine offspring the S.B.3) and, with the help of retired officers who flew the aircraft and enabled it to perform its relatively humdrum but nonetheless vital duties, brings to the reader an understanding of one of the lesser known Fleet Air Arm aircraft and its importance in the Service’s history. |
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