Samoloty Convair: książki - historia, typy i technika

Becoming the fourth largest aircraft manufacturer in the United States when Consolidated merged with Vultee in 1943, Convair quickly built a reputation for designing and building some of the largest and most powerful aircraft in the world.
From the XA-41 ground-attack aircraft in 1944 through to the CV-880 and CV-990 airliners of the early 1960s, Convair pushed the boundaries with every project they undertook. Some were inevitably more successful than others but all would make their mark in aviation history.

The novelty of the turboprop-powered Tradewind flying-boat, the glamour of the F-102 Delta Dagger and F-106 Delta Dart and the brutish power and futuristic appearance of the B-58 Hustler are all trademark Convair machines.

Discover the history behind these incredible machines, and many others as well, in this profusely illustrated book by aviation writer Martyn Chorlton.

Consolidated Vultee, which later became Convair, built some of the world's best flying boats in the 1930s, and the world's best bombers during World War II. Convair's six-engine B-36 strategic bomber was credited with keeping the world safe during the early throes of the Cold War. But before all these great aircraft took to the skies, scores of ideas and concepts were proposed and analyzed by company management to determine if production would even be feasible.

"Convair Advanced Designs" is a book that brings these futuristic, but stillborn, concepts to life for the very first time. It features many never-before-seen company photographs, models, and drawings of such futuristic concepts as a folding-rotor anti-submarine patrol bomber and a giant seaplane passenger transport launched from a high-speed rail car!
Readers will also be fascinated to see how certain seemingly unbelievable designs evolved into actual production airplanes years later, such as the giant Convair Tradewind turboprop seaplane transport.

First published in 1992, the Sea Dart book covers the engineering, development and testing of the Navy's only supersonic seaplane fighter ever built.

The XF2Y-1 was the seaborne fighter component of the Navy's late 1940 "mobile Base" concept along with Convair's R3Y Tradewind seaborne heavy transport and Martin's P6M SeaMaster seabourne supersonic bomber.

The concept was eventually abandoned with the twin Jet Sea Dart fighter and the P6M SeaMaster jet bomber being cancelled. The Sea Dart design was unique, as it used either one or two extendable skiis for its take offs and landings. 4 of the 5 Sea Darts are still on display or in storage today.

With vivid detail and many exclusive photographs, Wayne Mutza chronicles the Convair's F-102 Delta Dagger's unsteady course through history, from its inception to present-day survivors.
Presented for the first time are the fascinating details surrounding the F-102 in the air defense role, special projects, its unconventional use during the war in Southeast Asia, service with foreign air arms, the Air National Guard and its extensive involvement with the drone program.

Special features include a detailed listing of each aircraft's assignment history and many of the insignia associated with the F-102. Through in-depth research, the author has produced a most informative and interesting volume on a classic aircraft.

World War II saw the development of the heavy bomber as a decisive weapon which, in sufficient numbers, could overcome defensive fighters and guns and lay waste to strategic targets. The addition of nuclear weapons to the bomber's armament made it even more formidable, and by the late 1940s, US planners saw the growth of a Soviet nuclear-armed bomber fleet as a terrifying threat to North American security.
Conventional subsonic fighters with guns and free-flight air-to-air rockets would be incapable of reaching these incoming bombers in time to prevent even one from delivering a devastating nuclear attack.

As a result, supersonic speed, long-range guided missiles and precise radar-based control of an interception became prerequisites for a new breed of fighters, beginning with the F-102. A massive research and development effort produced the Convair F-102A '1954 Fighter', the J57 afterburning turbojet, its Hughes MX-1554 fire control system and, in due course, the Semi-Active Ground Environment (SAGE) radar and communications network that covered North America to guide its airborne defences.

In service, F-102As also provided air defence in Europe with USAFE, in the Far East and in Southeast Asia, where they protected US airbases in South Vietnam and Thailand from air attack by North Vietnamese fighters and bombers and escorted B-52s and fighter-bombers on their attack sorties.
This illustrated study from leading expert Peter E. Davis details the design, development, and deployment of the futuristic F-102, including its complex research program and role in Vietnam.