Golden Age of Flying-boats (Aeroplane Collectors' Archive Magazine)
by Martyn Chorlton (Ed)
English | January 2012 | PDF | 100 pages | 52.8 mb
http://www.amazon.com/Aeroplane-Collectors-Archive-Magazine-Flying-Boats/dp/B00BQ01JKI
THIS EDITION OF Aeroplane Collectors’ Archive concentrates on early British flying-boat development from 1913, through to the RAF’s last biplane flying-boat to enter service – the Supermarine Stranraer in 1937. The original concept for this issue was to focus on biplane flying-boats but we have included such types as the Inverness, Prawn and Windhover.
As with previous issues, technical information is kept to a minimum and attention is paid to photographs drawn from The Aeroplane’s archive. The time period covered in this issue is little more than 20 years but the range of types and the technical advances achieved in this time is astonishing. It is hard to believe that ‘Tommy’ Sopwith’s Bat Boat, which first fl ew in 1913, helped to germinate a seed that would grow, within a generation, into the Short Singapore III or the Supermarine Stranraer.
Those pioneering designers who fi rst envisaged a flying-boat faced considerably more problems than their land-based counter-parts. However, the rewards and the flexibility of such a machine saw the fl ying-boat era continuing on into the 1950s. The hull design and sufficiently powerful and reliable engines were always key to the success of a fl ying-boat, which often had to perform better on the water than in the air, if it stood any chance of being developed or ordered by a civilian or military customer.
As always, with any form of military technology, advances happen quicker during a war and the First World War did no harm in accelerating this process. The post-war period saw the RAF employing Felixstowe type-machines in quantity and the demand for the flying-boat did not relent during the 1920s when the Supermarine Southampton ruled the roost. Hull design continued to evolve and, reluctantly, designers gave in to flying-boats being made from metal. The Southampton saw the end of larger orders by the RAF and, up to the arrival of the Sunderland, the big multi-engined flying-boats were only ordered in relatively low numbers.
