My first book,
The Admiralty and the Helicopter, has been published this week.
The book charts the development of the Admiralty’s requirements and the numerous projects and design studies drawn up to fulfil them from the early 1950s to the present day. These range from the cancelled Bristol Type 191 tandem-rotor helicopter and the tiny Fairey Ultra Light of the 1950s, the Westland Wasp, Wessex and Sea King of the 1960s, the aborted plans to acquire Chinooks to the more recent Westland Lynx, EHI Merlin and Leonardo Wildcat. Also examined are the weapons deployed on these helicopters, including anti-submarine homing torpedoes and sea-skimming anti-ship missiles developed to equip the Fleet Air Arm’s helicopters. The book is also of interest to naval historians and features such as strategy, ASW doctrine and ship-aircraft interfacing issues.
There is quite a bit of unpublished material in the book and features photographs and line drawings, some of them done my myself.
The Admiralty and the Helicopter retails directly from Blue Envoy or from the various specialist aviation bookshops around the UK.
Chris Gibson (who runs Blue Envoy Press) aims for next day delivery when he's at home or despatch at weekends when he's away.
The price per copy is £11.95
Postage and packing (in a stiffy) by Royal Mail (First Class) or airmail for overseas is:
UK addresses - £1.90
Europe - £4.90
USA and Canada - £7.10
Australia/NZ/RoW - £7.50
As ever, if he can get the postage cheaper, he will refund the difference.
Payments by Paypal are preferred, please send payment, with a note of your address to: blue.envoy.servicesATgooglemail.com (replace 'AT' with @)
(Thanks to Ian and Gollevainen letting me advertise this here)