Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft since 1913

The great shipbuilding and engineering firm of Armstrong Whitworth first became concerned by aircraft in 1913 and it was the aviation business that kept the famous name alive during the slump of the 1920s. With the closure in 1919 of the original ‘aircraft departments’ in Newcastle upon Tyne, the centre of activity moved to Coventry, and Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft since 1913 describes the little – known facts behind this transfer of control. The main purpose of the book, however, is to describe in detail the great variety of aircraft which bore the Armstrong Whitworth name, including such well-known types as the F.K.8 biplane of 1916 and the Whitley bomber of the Second World War, as well as the siskin and the Atlas who served in large numbers with the peacetime RAF. Also described are the company’s passenger transports: the argosy of 1926, the first of Imperial Airways’ airliners to pay its way; the four-engined Atalanta monoplane built in 1932 for the Empire routes; and the larger ensign of 1938.

Not so well known are some of the Armstrong Whitworth oddities, such as the quaint quadruple of 1916, the almost equally freakish ‘variable geometry’ Ape biplane of 1926 and the highly sophisticated A. W. 52 flying wing’s aircraft with boundary-layer control and a laminar-flow wing section tested in 1947. Included, also, is a chapter dealing with the company’s airship activities, which range from the building of a diminutive car for the early naval airship HMA2, to the construction in 1919 of Great Britain’s most successful rigid airship, the R-33. Appendices contain production figures and serial numbers or registration marks for some 11,150 aircraft built by the firm, and particulars are given, in many cases for the first time, of numerous unbuilt Armstrong Whitworth projects.

This new impression incorporates some minor corrections and amendments to the first edition.