The Hawker Sea Fury: A Detailed Guide To The Fleet Air Arm's Last Piston-engine Fighter (Airframe Album) Paperback

Been looking for this for a long time. Would like to see more like this on in the future, need more of this quality.

The second title in Valiant Wings' Airframe Album series almost precisely follows that of the first. It's an 8-1/4" x 11-3/4" (European A4 size) square bound card cover with 96 interior pages. The sections are pretty much organized the same way. Every nook and cranny of the book is filled with something or other, only the inside front and rear covers are not pressed into service. Of special interest are the Hawker and Bristol advertising featuring the Sea Fury and its Centaurus engine, including the rear cover. The front cover has a specially commissioned painting depicting the Sea Fury downing a MiG-15, an impressive feat, but seemingly the only air to air victory the type ever achieved.The book begins with a five page preface which is all we get in terms of background, development, and service history. The meat of the book is the first section, Technical Description. It is a solid 41 pages of technical manual drawings and photos, supplemented by color close up photos of preserved examples. All this is ably supplemented by usually excellent captioning. I say usually because I think the author gets confused at a few points. He states the the main and auxiliary fuel tanks were moved behind the cockpits in the two seat version. This does not make any engineering sense; why move the fuel tanks from over the center of gravity to far behind it? He also states that there is a nose tank in the leading edge of each wing but I think there is only one in the starboard wing, the port wing has the oil cooler in that space.The nine page Evolution section details the changes form model to model although with this aircraft there is comparatively little of this. Again, I think the author gets confused in the case of the Fury prototype with the Sabre engine. The oil coolers were under the chin; the radiators were in the wing leading edges.A solid 23 pages are devoted to the Camouflage and Markings section. All services of all the operating nations are covered. There are six pages of color profiles with 5 per page. A mistake creeps into this section as well when "German Democratic Republic" is used where "Federal German Republic" was intended.There are plenty of surviving Sea Furies and nine pages are devoted to them. The histories do tend to be repetitive but it is interesting to see the same names appear again and again. It is also interesting how often the R-3350 replaces the Centaurus as spares for the latter become harder and harder to get. The book wraps up with four appendices devoted to comprehensive lists of model kits, accessories, decals, and books devoted to this aircraft.Highly recommended. I might have wished for more space devoted to the Fury Sabre and Griffon prototypes but that was probably asking for too much.

Parfait!

Superb

Excellent ouvrage sur un avion de légende de la guerre de Corée, le hawker sea Fury,ouvrage en anglais abondamment illustré de dessins, photos et planches en couleurs et texte en anglais facilement compréhensible, pour tous les fanas de l'avion ainsi que pour les maquettistes.bonne lecture