Wings Across the World: an Illustrated History of British Airways

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{detailed description}More than any other single event, man's conquest of flight may be said to have made the twentieth century what it is. The development of aviation had a transforming effect on travel, communications and warfare. The onset of commercial passenger services continued what the Wrights and others began and, from the start of the story in London, the history of British Airways provides a microcosm of the worldwide development of civil aviation over the past sixty years.
It is a story which began with wartime planning of an airline and led to the first scheduled flight on 25 August 1919 when a De Havilland DH 4A flew from Hounslow to Le Bourget, Paris, carrying an intriguingly mixed cargo of Devonshire cream, leather, newspapers and grouse. It ends, for the
moment at least, with a fleet of more than 200 aircraft carrying some 15 million passengers annually — with prospect of eventual hyper-sonic airliners reaching any point on the globe in 1½ hours.
In between lies a six-decade saga of dedication and dramatic progress, which Harald Penrose relates with unparalleled verve and skill. He tells of the pioneering early days and the achievements of such great companies as Handley Page, Instone, and Daimler, when the infant industry was striving to establish itself as a major form of world transport and aircraft rejoiced in such appropriately adventurous names as Argosy and Hercules. He writes too, with warmth and deep conviction, of the great men and machines which dominated the aviation world, for he knew them well. He then moves on to the crucial war years, when Britain's early investment in aircraft with military capacity paid its vital dividends. Later chapters take the epic tale up to the 1980s, the age of Concorde and the technological breakthrough it represents, and the battle of the aviation giants for supremacy — years filled with the different but no less crucial challenges of air travel on a massive scale.
The writing of Wings Across the World presented Harald Penrose with a task ideally suited to his standing as one of the world's foremost aviation historians. His text is lively and fast-moving, its authority underpinned by extensive experience as test pilot during his 42 years in the aircraft industry. It is illustrated by more than 200 photographs and drawings of the great aircraft, airmen and aviation events of his time.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Harald Penrose
published by Cassell 1980 1st edn. 304pp illustrated, index 20x27
{condition}slightly bumped at top edge otherwise very good, in slightly edge-worn d/j
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