Avions Fairey : beaux livres - histoire et modèles

Fairey 1915-60

NOUVEAU

One of the many ingredients required for creating a great aircraft company is the ability to diversify, and this was just one of the strengths that would keep the Fairey Aviation Company in business from 1915 through to 1960.
Like so many other aircraft manufacturers of the day, it found its feet by taking on sub-contract work, and, while this was being carried out, it began to build on its own aircraft portfolio. Fairey did not just sit back and produce aircraft in line with specifications, they designed new features that would be incorporated in all aircraft in the future.
The company's greatest, and most surprising, success story came about when the ubiquitous Swordfish, affectionately known as the 'Stringbag' entered production in 1936.

The company's venture into rotary wing aircraft would eventually become its undoing, despite huge technical achievements being achieved in a very short space of time. Soaked up by Westlands in 1960, the legacy of the company's final aircraft, the Rotodyne, still lives on today, and only now, in the 21st Century, is the world really ready for such a fantastic machine.
This book explores the fascinating history of the company and the aircraft it produced.

The Fairey Battle - a Reassessment of its RAF Career

The Fairey Battle is best known for being one of the worst aircraft ever to serve in the Royal Air Force. On operations, it suffered the highest loss rate of any plane in the RAF's history, and the missions flown by its brave crews became a byword for hopelessness and futility.
Born out of muddled thinking, condemned before it even reached the squadrons, and abandoned after the briefest of operational careers, the plane seems to thoroughly deserve its reputation.

But was the Battle so useless? Why did it suffer such terrible losses? Was there nothing that could have been done to prevent the disasters of 1940?
A fresh look at the documents of the time suggest there was. They reveal a very different story of ignored recommendations and missed opportunities. It was the way the plane was used rather than fundamental flaws in the design that ensured its operational career was such a dismal failure.
It might even be argued that, in the desperate days of the summer of 1940, the Fairey Battle was exactly what Britain needed.

Fairey Firefly

The Fairey Firefly two-seater strike-fighter emerged from troubled beginnings to become one of the most widely used and effective aircraft of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. It first saw service in 1944 during the attacks on the battleship Tirpitz as it lurked in the Norwegian fjords, then served in the Far East as the Fleet Air Arm tussled with the kamikaze threat.
It went on to form an important part of several embryonic naval air arms in the early years of the Cold War and performed a vital combat role in Korea in the early 1950s.

In this book, naval aviation historian Matthew Willis tells the story of this important aircraft using more than 160 photographs, many of them rare or unpublished, accompanied by a detailed commentary covering every aspect of the Firefly's varied career from fighter, to sub-hunter, to pilot-less target drone, in air forces all over the world.

Fairey Rotodyne

The Fairey Rotodyne was a large British compound helicopter designed and built by the Fairey Aviation Company and intended for commercial and military applications. It was considered to be one of the iconic aviation projects of the 1950/60s and a bright future was planned for the aircraft.
Widely accepted to be a revolutionary design, it was economically viable, fast and capable of vertical take-off and landing from city centre heliports. However despite the proven feasibility of this bold concept, the Rotodyne project was terminated in 1962 due to escalating development costs and unresolved technical issues.

This book seeks to fill a gap in aviation literature on the history of the Rotodyne, an aircraft ahead of its time. David Gibbings is a retired RAF engineer/navigator and flight test engineer for helicopters and aircraft. He worked on the Rotodyne with Fairey and subsequently was a Flight Test Engineer with Westland.