China Clipper: The Age of the Great Flying Boats Kindle Edition

This is a really good and highly detailed history of the age of the Great Flying Boats. I would say that the title of the book sat ly mat cha the content. Speaking for myself, I was completely happy with this book. I can unseat how some of is book will provide perhaps more detail than some readers will be looking for. That is not meant as a criticism. I really liked this book.I purchased this book on Kindle and also the audiobook narration. I liked both. The audiobook was good, but there are many photographs, sketches, and footnotes, that I am really glad that I had access to in both the Kindle and a Web Page of the author, Robert Gandt. I felt I got a lot more out of this experience by having both the Kindle and the audiobook. The Web Page was also very good.In summary, I completely enjoyed this reading and listening experience. I learned a lot. I did parallel reading and found all the information that I checked to be accurate. This book is something of a niche product. Not everyone is going to care specifically about The Great Flying Boats. But if one shares this specific interest with me, one may find this book very interesting and enjoyable. Thank You for taking the time to read this review.

This book gives an interesting glimpse into an early era of aviation history, a period that was born and died as I was growing up. The flying boat was the first to span oceans in the commerce of transporting people over long distances without having to refuel; and then, suddenly, its future was eclipsed when the German-built Condor made it over the Atlantic flying from Berlin, Germany to the USA with fuel to spare and made a hard surface landing. The flying boat was made to land on water because, at the time there were no airports existing yet for hard surface landings of aircraft large enough to fly the oceans. Although it filled a necessary gap, it also carried with it all the drawbacks of having to land on water. When the Condor landed it spelled the doom of flying boats and was the first land based aircraft put into commercial service for Trans-Atlantic flights. The first time I flew on business was on a trip from Newark airport to Chicago on a Lockheed Constellation; the "Connie" was a sleek-looking aircraft but the one I rode on had all the comforts of a cattle car and I had to hold on to my coffee cup for fear it might get launched onto my lap from all the rattling. Shortly, thereafter the "Connies" were put out of service; and I made a similar trip on the recently introduced British-built jet-propelled Comet, a beautiful aircraft where every seat was a first-class accommodation. Lucky for me I wasn't on one of those that crashed due to stress related defects which took it out of service a while later. The author of this book was a pilot in the flying boat service and I imagine they were no more comfortable than the "Connie" in their passenger comfort. Flying was fun back then before the days of excessive security measures and discomfort that we experience today. The author brings his personal insights into his writing for he personally knew many of the pilots flying in the service at that time. There were flying boats designed and flown by other nations and this book has many excellent photos illustrating some of them and anyone interested in the history of aviation will find this book most rewarding to fill missing gaps in their knowledge of these fascinating craft. Some may even make this book a permanent addition to their collection. The author has his own website that is well worth perusing.

I begin with the good things about this book. First, it ties together the flying boat project across the US, the UK,France and Germany in fashion that begins to relate one to the other both as technical tasks and as business ventures. Although written from an American perspective, it is reasonably appreciative of the activities of the other participants. It does focus on the decade from 1930 to 1940 which is sensible enough since that is when the big flying boats has their opportunities for success. Second, the author's background as a pilot gives him the ability to explain the technical and operational details in a simple and straightforward way for a lay audience. Third, this book is really quite well illustrated with many photographs of people and airplanes, an appendix of plan drawings of the significant big flying boats, and end papers that compare top shadow views of quite a few of them as well.In what ways does this book fall short? For one thing it is just too short for the complex story. Less than 200 pages of text in 26 short chapters is not enough. Secondly, although the comparative specification and performance charts in the appendix are interesting they are significantly incomplete. The author, with good reason, focuses signifcant time in the narrative discussing loaded weight to tare weight ratios and wing loadings but there are no comparative charts of these, which would have been simple enought to do.In fact the development of the big flying boats was a fascinating collision of political, business and technical issues and I get the impression the author knew a great deal more than ended up in this book. It is perhaps a fault of mine to criticize books for what they are not, not what they are, but the definitive history of the commercial flying boat has yet to be written. This is an interesting, if tantalizing and a bit frustrating, introduction.

This entertaining book covers the story of those famous flying boats and the short era that they served. Enough detail for technical geeks like me and an entertaining story of a lost era of luxury and innovation. It will make you long for a simpler time and realize that it took a lot of guts, money and hard work to make it happen.

Il libro racconta, con dettagli anche tecnici, l'epoca gloriosa degli idrovolanti quando la costruzione di nuovi aeroporti non andava di pari passo con la possibilità di voli transoceanici. Di qui lo sviluppo degli idrovolanti che potevano andare da un continente all'altro in più giorni facendo tappe nelle isole ammarando sull'acqua. Pensando agli spazi angusti e al pessimo cibo dei voli attuali, c'è un po' di invidia per quei viaggiatori che affrontavano viaggi avventurosi su aerei maestosi e dotati di letti e pasti preparati da cuochi.

Read this one after reading the Fall of Pan Am. It has a lot of techie stuff which I love, But may be dry for some.