Customer Reviews

Hawker Aircraft Since 1920 (Putnam Aeronautical Books)

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I usually enojoy Putnam reprints and this is the usual good stuff you expect from this publisher. It contains a good deal of history of the Hawker company since its origins as Sopwith.

The Putnam Aeronautical Books series contains many volumes, of which I own several. This seems the least helpful of any. The other two titles in the "... Aircraft since 19XX " series that I own are on Shorts and Supermarine. The shortcomings of this voume on Hawker are as follows:
1. There is little understanding of who contributed what at Hawker other than Sidney Camm and some test pilots although clearly some very talented folks worked there. See for expample the book "Sidney Camm and the Hurricane" Airlife, 1991 which makes this abundently clear.
2. Unlike in the volume on Supermarine, there is little coverage on projects that were not built but showed where the thinking of the company was directed. The very short section at the rear with a tantalizing list and a few plans is no substitute for including this in the flow of the narrative.
3. No fault of the author, this book was published in 1961. The P1127 had just flown, so little or nothing of the Harrier and Hawk stories is told and some of the description of the Hunter work may well have been obscured by security concerns of the day.
4. The description of the aircraft is just that, descriptive, with no attempt to explain and contextualize the technology involved. The change from tube frame to stressed skin fusalage construction must have been significant to the entire Hawker organization, but it is just described. In fact, from the description of Typhoon development it is clear that Hawker had structural problems (in-flight failures) with their first monocoque but this is never dealt with as such.

All in all, this book is worth buying at discounted used prices, or in order to complete a collection but really does not help us understand what Hawker really contributed to 20th century aeronautical development.