Customer Reviews

Bellanca C.F.: The Emergence of the Cabin Monoplane in the United States

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This book is really composed of three volumes, each of which meets with varying degrees of success. First, it is a history of the construction and flight career of the Bellanca C.F. airplane; second, a look at the career and output of Giuseppe Bellanca; and third, a chronicle of the restoration of the C.F. airplane.

The story of the C.F.'s construction and very short flight career is well done, with an engaging amount of detail and wonderful photographs. Many observations and comments from eyewitnesses and participants are woven into the narrative. These provide keen insight into the design considerations and the actual building of the airplane, in the context of the standards of the post-WWI era. The outstanding performance of the aircraft is also well documented, especially in comparison with the major competitors of its day, the Curtiss Jenny and Oriole and the Laird Swallow.

The career of Giuseppe Bellanca after the success of the C.F. forms the next major portion of the book. It is here that the book really disappoints the reader. Far too much space is spent on Bellanca's involvement with the race to win the Orteig Prize for the first non-stop New York-Paris flight, eventually won by Charles Lindbergh in May 1927, although some of the background politics that paralyzed the Bellanca team are interesting. After this event, the book rapidly devolves into merely a list of successful and unsuccessful record-setting flight attempts involving Bellanca aircraft, with too little detail for meaningful reader involvement. Far too little space is spent on other aircraft designed and built by Bellanca during and after this period, while the many excellent photographs just whet the reader's appetite for more information about each model.

Finally, the last portion of the book addresses the restoration of the Bellanca C.F. airplane to near-flying condition by Smithsonian/National Air & Space Museum craftsmen. The photos are excellent, but the text is dull and ordinary. Few details about restoration materials, techniques, or accuracy are provided, except to say that many of the items created by the craftsmen are mere guesses at the original components' configuration, since little or no detail data remains for this airplane. Too often, the Smithsonian/NASM (who published the book) comes across as pompous and self-congratulatory regarding its mission to preserve aviation history and artifacts for future generations.

In summary, the book bites off more than it can chew. The book provides a tantalizing glimpse of the history of Bellanca; a complete history would surely run many hundreds of pages, far beyond the scope of this work. But when it concentrates on the subject of its title, it provides worthwhile information to the aviation-history minded reader.