Book reviews, June 1982, June 1982

“Canadian Aircraft Since 1919”by K. M. Moldon and H. A. Taylor. 530 pp., 8 3/4″ x 5 1/2″. “Lockheed Aircraft since 1913” by René J. Francillon. 526 pp., 8 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ (Putnam & Co. Ltd., 9, Bow Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 7AL. £20.00 each). These two all-embracing histories follow the well-known Putnam format, being Bodley Head imprints. The book about Canadian aircraft runs from Avro 504 and even earlier aeroplanes to the Westland Lysander, quoting alphabetically, and the coverage is highly praiseworthy, both pictorially and in description with a wealth of tabulated data. Apart from descriptions of each aeroplane, with mainly photographic support, 759 and the occasional drawing and scale-plan, the book goes into the matter of the various aircraft-producing companies in Canada, from Avro Canada to Reid and Curtis-Reid, after introductions to the origins of aviation in this country and the civil and military developments.

The book about the famous firm of Lockheed is similarly comprehensive but about the products of that company only, from the Model-G to the S-3 Viking, but there is much information about Lockheed sub-divisions and the expected informative appendices. The frontspiece of the first book shows a fire-fighting Canadair CL-215, that of the other book a Lockheed P-38F-I-LO over Sierra Nevada in 1942, during tests of 165-gallon drop-tanks. — W.B.