Customer Reviews

Convair Advanced Designs: Secret Projects from San Diego, 1923-1962

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I would not like to overdo it, but this book is great. The layout is superb and readers will see little-known designs and studies supplemented with company drawings, illustrations, photos of models, and in some cases, photos of completed aircraft. Among the surprises were "flying wing" studies which included a tail boom, and those without, a nuclear seaplane, and a Mach 4 Attack Seaplane (dated 1958).

Highly recommended.

I get the impression that the author spent a few years buried in the Convair archives at the San Diego Aerospace Museum digging up all of this arcane information. Given the sheer numbers of entries and the limits on how big a given book can be, I don't much miss a lot of data on each entry. Probably, there isn't much available on a lot of these prujects, because they were (mercifully) terminated at an early stage. It is facinating to review the Consolidated penchant for flying boats and amphibians of all sizes, shapes and roles.

This book follows the pack of recent references including the "Secret Projects" series. Unlike those books this one only, obviously, follows the products of Consolidated/Convair Aviation from that company's formation to its evolution into General Dynamics.
For those of you who enjoyed the books on German Secret Projects of WW2 or followed the web site 'Luft'46' you will find much the same format, with short discussion about each project and at least one picture per project, which is why I did not give this book five stars.
Missing from this book are any charts or tables clearly defining the performance parameters of any of the projects which either made it into production or lingered on the drafting boards. Also receiving short change in the project descriptions is anything more than a short explanation of the military or commercial requirement each project was designed to satisfy.

In short this book is an excellent initial resource for those interested in the history of American aviation, listing most of the projects carried out by Convair, but for more depth you will have to look elsewhere.

That said, I certainly hope that this will become the forerunner of a series highlighting each of the major American manufacturers.

The aircraft manufacturer Consolidated Vultee (later to be renamed 'Convair') built 'flying boats' in the 1930s, those aircraft that could land and take off on water. Then in World War II they produced Convair's six-engine B-36 strategic bombers that played such a vital role in the outcome of that global conflict. While famous for the planes they built, what is not generally known is that from their very beginning, they were also very involved in aeronautical research and development, looking to the future of aviation. "Convair Advanced Designs: Secret Projects from San Diego, 1923-1962", compiled and annotated by Robert Bradley, is a 192-page illustrated compendium of ideas and concepts that were generated, but which never materialized. Replete with company photographs, models, and drawings of 'futuristic' aviation concepts as a folding-rotor anti-submarine patrol bomber, a giant seaplane passenger transport to be launched from a high-speed rail car, and many other fanciful designs, "Convair Advanced Designs: Secret Projects from San Diego, 1923-1962" is a unique 'window in time' giving us access to the kinds of imaginative proposals the aeronautical engineers of one of the nation's most prestigious aviation companies came up with. A valued addition to academic library 20th Century Aviation History collections, "Convair Advanced Designs: Secret Projects from San Diego, 1923-1962" will prove to be a fascinating and informative browse for the non-specialist general reader with an interest in American aviation.

It's always fun to read about proposed projects that never quite made it off the drawing board. It is obvious some time was spent by the author doing some research instead of referencing previously books.

If your interests go that deep, buy the book.

Unbuilt projects are all the rage these days and this book taps into that interest. It focuses not only on the projects of a single company but the projects of a single location of that company. The projects of Consolidated from its beginnings in Rhode Island, through early years at Buffalo, and finally the decades at San Diego are presented here.

The author warns beforehand that the book is largely based on files that were donated to the San Diego Air & Space Museum when the San Diego facility was closed and that the materials donated were incomplete with many gaps. Within these restrictions the author does an admirable job of turning out an interesting and highly informative book by bridging gaps with his own theorizing and speculation, but always labeled as such. Few companies paid much attention to their corporate history; unfortunately Consolidated/Convair was not one of them.

Nevertheless, the author does not appear to have gone to much effort to supplement the Convair material with material from government archives. For this reason I can't rank this book quite as highly as the works of Jared Zichek. Also, the projects depicted are either seaplanes or bombers. The book is roughly 2/3 the former and 1/3 the latter. Since the F-102 and F-106 were designed and built at San Diego surely there would have been some fighter projects? The author is silent on the subject.

The production values are first rate. All is reproduced very well although occasionally smaller than I would have preferred. There is one instance of captions being swapped between two illustration but it's fairly obvious.

The publisher Specialty Press will no longer be offering new titles. This is regrettable, their high standards will be missed. Highly recommended to those who love chapters with titles like "Mach 4 Attack Seaplane".

This book is an excellent overview of Convair's works. Well, at least some of them! The book focuses on what the Convair engineers in San Diego came up with over a forty year span. There's lots and lots of fascinating things included here.

Among these are the number of Convair designs for flying wing bombers! To most aviation enthusiasts, the only flying wing bombers were from Northrop. This book puts that one to rest. There's also other fascinating proposals for different types of conventional bombers - both before and after the B-36. Jet powered seaplanes - including what would have essentially been a jet powered version of the Catalina - and transport aircraft as well.

All in all this is a fascinating and very worthwhile book to have. My only wish is that it went into more detail on these proposed aircraft. It's obvious from the materials presented that quite a few of these designs had a lot more effort poured into them than just concept artist sketches and it would've been great to have seen those extra details.

Still though, given the breadth of the subject, the coverage is more than adequate to convey the magnitude of what Convair came up with. I view this book as an essential element of any good aviation history collection. Especially if you're a fan of "What ifs" and "Might have beens" in aviation lore.

I highly recommend this book and am very satisfied with my having purchased it.

The Convair Advance Design book was very interesting. Many unknown and interesting aircraft designs were written about. The biggest problem that I had with the book was that some of the drawings that were used had small type in them. With all of the computer graphics that are available, the type size could have been increased.

I hope that more books like this will be published about other aircraft companies such as Douglas and Boeing.

Everyone in aviation knows about the futuristic designs that were born from Lockheed's "Skunk Works". Most know about some of the impressive designs to come from Convair. This book highlights many interesting designs that are not so well known, as well as famous ones like the B-36.

Each type of plane designed by the Convair group, as long as it qualified at the time as an advanced design, is included in these pages. For each type, the genesis and operational history (if any) is provided in clear text, and accompanied by various photos, design drawings, and in some case cutaway views.

This is well worth a look by any airplane history enthusiast.