Book Reviews

SYDNEY CAMM

Hurricane and Harrier Designer: Saviour of Britain

By John Sweetman

Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2019. £25.

Top: Hawker Hurricane IIC, PZ865/G-AMAU, The Last of the Many!, the final production Hurricane. This aircraft remains airworthy with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. Above: Sydney and Hilda Camm with their daughter, Phyllis, a student at Kingston Art School in 1941. Monty and Carlo are the family dog and cat. Both RAeS (NAL).

John Sweetman is perhaps best known for his books on bomber operations but this is a whole-life biography of one of the great fighter aircraft designers, Sydney Camm (Sir Sydney from 1953). This detailed account focuses on Camm’s interactions with the people around him, complementary to the technical aspects of his work already well reported.

In his boyhood, Camm was an avid reader of aviation magazines and, as a founder of the Windsor Model Aeroplane Club, he wrote articles for the journal Flight.

The club built a biplane glider but a powered craft project was ended with the start of WW1 when Camm moved to Brooklands as a ‘shopfloor woodworker’ with the firm that became Martinsyde. A move into the drawing office provided his first mature experience of aircraft design.

He had no formal engineering training but his ready comprehension of technical matters was shown by his first book Aeroplane Construction of 1915, which was well-received in Britain and the US. It included a section on monocoque or stressed skin construction, which Sweetman notes ‘he would resist for almost twenty years in his own work’, referring to his caution in moving on from methods that he had tried and tested.

He remained with George Handasyde until moving in 1923 to Hawkers as a draughtsman. After the Chief Designer (Wilfred) George Carter left, after an interregnum of ten months Camm was appointed to the post in 1925. Receiving strong support from one of the founders T O M Sopwith (Sir Tom from 1953), he remained with the firm in its various guises for the rest of his life.

Reports show that at work Camm was a martinet, with a quick temper accompanied by shouted ‘industrial language’, particularly if a component design seemed not to have the lowest possible weight for its duty but he was respected for his high standards and leadership.

Being basically a shy man, he was uncomfortable in company and social life in general, but he made a happy marriage. Sweetman duly records details of their daughter and granddaughter and many relatives. Examples of his ‘unobtrusive thoughtfulness’ included giving lifts to female staff and relatives in his E-type Jaguar. [This first appeared in 1961, so the earlier references should perhaps be to SS Jaguars, produced from 1936.]

The central chapters of the book deal with the evolution of the Hurricane and its operations throughout its service life. This is interwoven with extracts from contemporary Hawker archives detailing the interactions between the firm and the Air Ministry, principally by Camm in person.

The term ‘Saviour of Britain’, quoted in the title of the book, was a typical attribution in the media storm following the contribution by Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain and his award of the CBE in 1941.

Camm’s designs for potential successors for the Hurricane entered service only towards the end of the war, as the Typhoon and Tempest. His last piston-engined type was the Sea Fury, becoming the mainstay of the RN carrier force. The graceful Seahawk naval fighter was Camm’s first jet aircraft to enter service, followed by the Hunter, considered by many to have been his most elegant design.

A well-presented account, in which this reader readily became absorbed and thoroughly recommends

A supersonic air-superiority fighter project had to be abandoned when the White Paper of 1957 decreed that fighters would now be replaced by missiles. However, contact with Stanley Hooker of Bristol Engines Ltd had led Camm to envisage a new aircraft concept, using the BE53 engine, developed to provide both jet lift and propulsion.

The resulting project P1127 was led by Ralph Hooper, one of the first graduate engineers that had joined the team after the war, but Camm closely followed all matters relating to design at every stage. Appointed Chief Engineer of Hawker Aircraft Ltd in 1959 and moving to ever more senior positions in the Hawker Siddeley Group, he remained at the front of representations about future projects with key Ministry and Services figures.

In the later chapters of the book Sweetman details from Hawker archives the fruitless discussions and project submissions made to promote the Harrier and derivatives, throughout which Camm showed remarkable persistence. Meanwhile, the P1127, a private venture up to the prototype stage, demonstrated the practicality of the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) principle, gaining widespread publicity.

With more support provided by the US and Germany, an evaluation squadron was formed, the aircraft now to be named Kestrel. Camm lived to know that this led to an order for a pre-production version for the RAF but the eventual order for the Harrier, and versions for the RN and US Marine Corps, did not come until after his death in 1966.

As a biography, the story ends at that point. There are photographs of Camm’s relatives and even one of his dog but only one each of the Hurricane and Harrier of the title.

The level of detail is notable and given the wide range of archived material consulted by Sweetman, it seems unlikely that any significant interaction in Camm’s life has been overlooked. A well-presented account, in which this reader readily became absorbed and thoroughly recommends.

Prof Brian Brinkworth
CEng FREng FRAeS 

EUROPEAN-RUSSIAN SPACE COOPERATION

From de Gaulle to ExoMars

By Brian Harvey

Springer Praxis, 2021, 418pp, £24.99.

The inaugural launch of Soyuz VS01 on 21 October 2011 from the ELS launch complex in the ESA’s Guiana Space Centre. It carried two Galileo satellites. DLR German Aerospace Center

The well-known chronicler of space activities, Brian Harvey, has produced a timely addition to his impressive portfolio which already includes many of the space programmes of China, Asia, Europe, Russia and the US. His latest book examines the history of collaboration between Western Europe and Russia (the Soviet Union prior to 1991) from the dawn of the space age until now.

France was instrumental in breaking through Cold War politics to establish an impressive list of collaborative space projects with Russia, first in science and leading on to human spaceflight – the first Western European astronaut was Frenchman Jean-Loup Chrétien who spent eight days on the Salyut 8 space station in 1982, which was more than a year before the European Space Agency’s Ulf Merbold of Germany joined the crew of the US Space Shuttle to become the second Western European astronaut.

Another high-profile example of this collaboration was that France became the first western nation to receive samples of Moon dust brought back by the Soviet Luna 16, 20 and 24 probes in the 1970s. Germany and then the European Space Agency built on French collaboration with Russia and these relationships continue to this day. A brief link between Britain’s Jodrell Bank and the Soviet Union pre-dating the French initiatives is touched upon by Harvey but fizzled out by 1966.

The well-known chronicler of space activities, Brian Harvey, has produced a timely addition to his impressive portfolio

The history described by Harvey shows that space co-operation with Russia helped rather than hindered co-operation with the US even when political tensions between the superpowers was at its most intense.

The title of the book neatly captures the fact that Europe’s space programmes continue to look both East and West for collaboration as illustrated by current plans for scientific exploration of Mars – ExoMars with Russia and Mars Sample Return with the US. As a result, Europe has achieved ambitious objectives in space without having to develop a full complement of technologies and capabilities – in effect punching above its weight.

The book has chapters on the different types of space projects (scientific, human spaceflight and commercial) which works well due to the different political context of each. The wealth of detail is made accessible by use of summary tables and by the lavish illustrations, making it a joy to read.

Harvey takes account of the transfer of former Soviet Bloc countries, such as East Germany, to the European Union after 1989. Tantalisingly, he doesn’t track back the history of those countries’ links to Russia, so if he decides to write a second edition, that would be a subject to consider adding.

To complete the ‘Europe-Russia’ picture, perhaps he could also cover the hugely significant history of Ukraine-Russia space collaboration which became controversial after the break-up of the Soviet Union and remains so today.

Pat Norris
CITP FRAeS

Pat Norris is the author of Returning People to the Moon After Apollo: Will It Be Another 50 Years? (Springer, 2020) 

TO RULE THE SKIES

General Thomas S Power and the Rise of Strategic Air Command in the Cold War

By Brent D Ziarnick

Naval Institute Press, 299pp, £37.50.

General Thomas Sarsfield Power, Commander-in Chief of the Strategic Air Command. USAF.

During its 46 years of operation, Strategic Air Command (SAC) had just 13 commanders. Best known of these was General Curtis E LeMay, SAC’s second and longest-serving leader credited with building the ‘hollow threat’ command into a powerful global force. His successor, General Thomas S Power, was arguably far more vilified and far less venerated. Maligned for his insensitive language and lack of a college degree, Power is traditionally seen as LeMay’s ‘yes man’ and ‘hatchet man’, lacking in erudition, polish and independence. Dismissed by scholars as beyond intelligibility on matters of strategy and nuclear deterrence, no one has yet seen fit to undertake a serious study of the SAC commander who once said some variation of “the whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!”

Brent Ziarnick’s To Rule the Skies is a rehabilitation of Power as a commander and nuclear strategist who saw the world in black and white rather than the many shades of grey prevalent among his critics. In Ziarnick’s telling, Power was anything but LeMay’s lap dog and, in fact, was responsible for many innovations attributed to LeMay, ranging from the Tokyo fire raids to introducing judo to SAC. ‘Tommy’ was anything but – to use I F Stone’s characterisation of LeMay – a ‘tough, old troglodyte’ spouting a ‘jingoist, militant philosophy’. Instead, Ziarnick argues, Power’s dismal reputation is the result of the ‘arrogance of the intellectual class in the 1960s and the vitriol of the antinuclear movement that followed’. To Rule the Skies is an essential reckoning in the ongoing reassessment of significant Cold War history.

Chapters cover Power’s early life through his years in combat during the Second World War, his visionary leadership at Air Research and Development Command, Power’s assumption as SAC’s third Commander-in-Chief, the trials of building the initial Strategic Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), ‘SAC’s finest hour’ during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, his efforts to incorporate, inter alia, a manned space component to SAC’s arsenal, and his brief life in retirement. The book includes endnotes, black-andwhite illustrations, a bibliography and is fully indexed.

The book’s strength is its explication of Power’s thinking in nuclear strategy and warfare. Power rejected the notion embraced by the US Navy and many think tank experts that the US should provide only the ‘minimum deterrence’ necessary to prevent a Soviet attack, saying that only Khrushchev knew how much that was, not some whizz-kid at RAND. Instead, Power argued that only the promise of overwhelming nuclear annihilation against counterforce military targets rather than countervalue cities and industries could dissuade the Soviets from making the first move. Power focused on SAC’s capabilities, while his critics – fearful of what they falsely believed to be his barely concealed commitment to preventive war – instead emphasised the risks entailed in his policies, strategies, and new weapon system procurement. Far from being the war-loving, roll-back psychopath cartoon Jack Ripper from Dr Strangelove, Power told visitors to SAC Headquarters: “If man resorts to the use of thermonuclear weapons to settle his difference or accomplish his aims, well then in my opinion, mankind will have reached his highest plateau of stupidity.”

To Rule the Skies is a respectable history of Power and his contributions to the evolution of Cold War nuclear airpower

Ziarnick largely succeeds in making Power a more human, more insightful, more cerebral commander. The challenge, however, is finding the right audience. For decades, Power’s tattered reputation has been carved in granite by the academic and intellectual community, enshrined as canon, for example, in Fred Kaplan’s Wizards of Armageddon. Large portions of Ziarnick’s last two chapters read like a case-by-case rebuttal to each slight listed there or repeated in the pages of The New Yorker but to what end? To Rule the Skies may well appeal to receptive SAC alumni or advocates of strategic bombing but it will not shake the dogmatic faith of believers in Wizards, who for decades have controlled the narrative and analytic branches of nuclear and diplomatic history. A more powerful and persuasive argument is needed.

Ziarnick’s uneven scholarship weakens his otherwise compelling argument. The chapter on the Cuban Missile Crisis offers little beyond the official SAC history (46 of 67 endnotes cite only this; the remainder are repetitions of mostly secondary sources). He has adequately mined the archival resources at the Air Force Historical Research Agency but fails to go beyond that. There’s no indication that he consulted the complete Power papers at Syracuse University or those of any contemporaries whose correspondence might offer deeper insight. Critics will justifiably assert that the result is a very parochial and favourably skewed view of a controversial figure.

To Rule the Skies is a respectable history of Power and his contributions to the evolution of Cold War nuclear airpower. It will be the go-to reference on Power until a more in-depth and balanced biography is available.

Dr Robert S Hopkins, III
FRAeS Editor, Journal of Aeronautical History 

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