British Experimental Combat Aircraft of World War II: Prototypes, Research Aircraft and Failed Production Designs
by Tony Buttler, Hikoki Publications, Manchester, UK, 2012, $56.95.
When Lord Beaverbrook became British minister of aircraft production in May 1940, World War II was going very badly for Britain. Consequently, one of his first acts was to restrict aircraft production, at least for the short term, to five critical types: the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane fighters, and the Bristol Blenheim, Armstrong-Whitworth Whitley and Vickers Wellington bombers. It was a Draconian measure, but it arguably helped to increase the supply of the most critically needed aircraft types at the conflict’s most desperate stage.
Beaverbrooks’s drastic measure materially hampered the development of many aircraft, but the advancement of new planes never came to a complete halt. In fact, during 1941 many useful new types entered production, including the Hawker Typhoon, Short Stirling and de Havilland Mosquito.
British Experimental Combat Aircraft of World War II is a lavish new compendium of the projects that were being pursued in Britain in the course of the war. It demonstrates that despite the harsh restrictions imposed during 1940, the British aviation industry still managed to produce projects every bit as advanced, as imaginative and sometimes as bizarre as those created in Germany and the United States.
Not all these aircraft failed because they weren’t good. Some of them, such as the turret-armed fighters and the “cheap-and-cheerful” war emergency home-defense fighters, went nowhere because of changes in operational requirements. Among the latter was the Miles M.20, the first fighter to include a blown, single-piece bubble canopy, which was way ahead of its time in 1940. Others, such as Short’s enormous Shetland flying boat, which was intended to replace the Sunderland, were simply too large to justify mass production. A few, such as the Supermarine Spiteful, the intended successor to the immortal Spitfire, and the equally spectacular Martin-Baker MB-5, simply came too late. Another fighter, the Hawker Tornado, failed solely due to a poor choice of power plant, but was subsequently mass-produced with a different engine under another name, Typhoon.
British Experimental Combat Aircraft of World War II is a must for anyone interested in aviation, particularly those with a taste for the rare and the strange. Its price tag derives from the fact that it is large-format and lavishly illustrated, almost a “coffeetable book.” But this treasure trove of the sublime and the bizarre is meticulously researched and packed with information that is probably available nowhere else in a single volume.
Originally published in the July 2013 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
