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Flying Boats & Seaplanes
by Stephane Nicolaou
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191 pages, hardcover
MBI Publishing Company, 1998 |
This comprehensive look at the development of seaplanes is well written and complemented
nicely by outstanding photography. Although the focus of the book is on early development, the periods covered include
WWI, the Schneider Cup races, WWII, and the post-war years.
Publisher's Comments
The idea of aircraft taking off from and landing on water set new challenges for the pioneers of aviation:
there were problems of hydrodynamics to be confronted in addition to the difficulties of making a
machine which would actually fly. Yet the challenges were met in the first decade of the 20th century, and the
future looked promising.
There were four significant periods in the history of marine aviation. The first was
World War I, when what had been learned by the pioneers was put to military use,
not in air-to-air combat but on observation, deep-sea patrols, anti-submarine duties
and the torpedo attacks on ships. The second was the inter-war years, which saw racing seaplanes of
exquisite design repeatedly break speed records in the glorious days of the
Schneider Trophy races. This was also the heyday of the large flying boat, when Imperial Airways in Britain,
with their Short Empire class aircraft, and Pan American in the USA, with
Boeing Clippers, carried the mail and fare-paying passengers, in what today seems fabulous luxury, on
regular intercontinental services almost spanning the globe.
The third period was the World War II. By now seaplanes and flying boats were a thoroughly proven
factor, and some 10,000 were built by the participating nations for wartime service, particularly in
reconnaissance, air-sea rescue, torpedo and anti-submarine roles. The best remembered are perhaps the
Consolidated Catalina and
Short Sunderland flying boats and the Fairey Swordfish and Chance Vought Kingfisher seaplanes.
The final period, the postwar years, was significant because it saw the decline of marine aviation. As
numbers of airfields grew, these aircraft's relevance declined, but there were still
some heroic projects, notably Howard Hughes's gigantic eight-engined 'Spruce Goose', which only once managed to drag
itself into the air, and the 150-ton SARO Princess flying boats, which were
killed off when BOAC cancelled its order for them.
Today, seaplanes and flying boats are still at work carrying freight and passengers in places like the
Dutch Antilles, Alaska and western Canada, and the final chapter contains a collection of colour photographs of
these survivors.
In this book the author has provided a comprehensive study of the aircraft which made the history of this fascinating
branch of aviation, and he has brought together an extraordinary range of photographs -- over 310 in all -- from the
archives around the world. For aviation enthusiasts, the book is an invaluable reference source as well as an
evocative tribute to the lost age of seaplanes and flying boats.
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