Book Reviews

The RAF’s voluntary squadrons, 1926-1957

By Louise Wilkinson

Air World, 2020, 319pp, £25.

The aircraft and pupils of the RAFVR at Gatwick. Aircraft include Hawker Harts, de Havilland Tiger Moths and Miles Magisters. RAeS (NAL).

In 1924, six years after the formation of the Royal Air Force, Parliament passed the Auxiliary Air Forces act, thus paving the way for the creation of reserve units of the RAF. Subsequently, in 1926, the Air Ministry set up two different reserve units: the Auxiliary Air Force (AAF) and the Special Reserve (SR). Both were set up on a territorial basis, that is to say units were based on a nearby airfield and they recruited from the surrounding area.

The AAF catered for those who wished to fly or wanted to learn to fly. Members had to hold a pilot’s licence or obtain one at their own expense. It came to be regarded as a gentlemen’s flying club, with many of the members having a public school and university background. The SR, on the other hand, catered more for those who had a trade or wanted to learn a trade.

Later, the SR was merged into the AAF and then, in 1936, a new organisation, the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) was formed. This was a much more egalitarian organisation where members were recruited as Sergeant Pilots and taught to fly. They then had the opportunity to be commissioned based on merit.

The reserve squadrons played a vital part in the Second World War, including such famous names as the 600 (City of London) and 601 (County of London) squadrons. After the war the reserve air forces were re-established, including the setting up of a number of University Air Squadrons.

This fascinating story of the RAF reserves is examined in great detail in this book, which was originally written as her thesis for a PhD degree by Dr Wilkinson. In the book the author considers the history of the various reserve organisations from the early 1920s up until 1957. She deals particularly with the social backgrounds of the members and explores the effects of the differences in social status on recruiting in the pre-war era. The book also has extensive annexes giving the personal details of the officers who served in the Auxiliary Air Forces with before and after WW2.

The amount of detail contained in the book is amazing and there can be no more complete record of the voluntary squadrons that made up the Territorial Air Force. Any student of this subject should most certainly start here.

Sir Donald Spiers
CEng HonFRAeS 

By Captain Dick Twomey

Quad Publications, Mauritius, 2020, 134 pages quarto.

An Air Mauritius Boeing 747SP-44 at Rome-Fiumicino Airport in 1992. Aldo Bidini.

The book is not generally available but can be obtained direct from the publisher by emailing sales@quadprinters.com. A copy is available in the National Aerospace Library. This slim memoir written by Captain Dick Twomey FRAeS shortly before he died (obituary in AEROSPACE, August 2020) is part love letter to flying, part description of the evolution of the British air transport business since WW2 and part useful tips for pilots of the ‘I learned about flying from that’ variety.

Dick Twomey’s love of flying started as a schoolboy in the 1940s, designing and building his own model aircraft and founding an aeromodelling club at his school, Ampleforth College. While still a schoolboy in 1947 he achieved a British distance record for hand-launched gliders with one of his own designs. Soon afterwards, during his National Service in the Royal Air Force, he was selected for pilot training on the basis of his aeromodelling experience despite having studied the classics at school rather than the sciences.

After National Service, aged 21 he studied for a degree at University College Dublin but he continued to fly as much as he could in the RAF Volunteer Reserve and in light aircraft. Dick’s 40-year career in commercial aviation began with Cambrian Airways in 1954 flying de Havilland Rapides, Doves and Herons, and the DC-3. As he tells it, this was seat of the pants flying, dodging bad weather and contending with unreliable engines. From Cambrian he moved to British European Airways, then British Airways. His experience of auto-landing in the Trident, his favourite aircraft, was a world away from his early flying with Cambrian.

As a senior manager in British Airways Dick was responsible for introducing both the Shuttle service and Club Class, which both had a significant effect on the airline’s business model. He then became BA’s General Manager Germany, based in Berlin towards the end of the Cold War, which brought unique challenges. After retiring from BA in 1985 he spent the next six years creating and running an independent airline: Berlin Regional UK, later Berlin European UK. Because of the unique political status of Berlin this had to be registered in the UK but, after the Berlin Wall came down, the market for a foreign-registered airline collapsed.

Having wound up Berlin European, Dick moved to Mauritius, where he settled, and spent 1991 to 1994 as Flight Operations Director of Air Mauritius. After a brief spell as the Flight Operations Director of another start-up, Carib Express and a few years as an aviation consultant in Africa, Dick finally retired in his 70s. However, he was not idle in retirement.

Having been a member of the RAeS from an early age, Dick set himself to make Mauritius more air-minded. He was instrumental in the creation of the Aeronautical Society of Mauritius in 2013, serving as its first Secretary and later President. Also, with the wheel turning full circle, he devoted a great deal of time to passing on his love of aeromodelling to school children throughout Mauritius.

Reading this account of a varied and fascinating career one might form the impression that throughout his career Dick was lucky to be in the right place at the right time for the birth of something new, like the Shuttle. However, this reviewer thinks that Dick’s bosses knew that if they wanted something novel or difficult done, they should ‘give it to Captain Twomey’. His passion for and commitment to aviation never dimmed. While in ground jobs he contrived to keep flying and while in flying posts he was prepared to take on additional management tasks.

Wing Tips is amply illustrated with pictures and diagrams. Appendices offer a reprint of an article that the author wrote for The Aeronautical Journal on ‘The Economics of Shuttle’ and the script of his press conference speech at the inauguration of Berlin European UK in 1988. The Preface is written by Society Past-President Rear Admiral Simon Henley FRAeS and Professor Marc Serge Riviere, a noted Mauritian academic, has added an appreciation of Dick Twomey’s life and work. This book is not an extensive historical analysis but it does give a vivid account of what it was like to be so deeply involved in aviation in the second half of the 20th Century. It is also a fitting memorial to a highly accomplished, but modest, man who left his mark on aviation across the world. I highly recommend it.

Bill Tyack
​CBE FRAeS

From ‘V’ Bombers to Concorde. A Flight Test Engineer’s Story

By John R W Smith Pen and Sword, 2020, 279pp, Illustrated, £25.

The first prototype Avro 748, G-APZV. RAeS (NAL).

The author was a flight test engineer from the 1960 to the 1980s. This book is his autobiography and, as with many autobiographies of retired engineers, it could be dull. Fortunately, this is not. It is a good read. The author started at Avro, Woodford as an undergraduate engineer and, after an exciting career as a flight test engineer at Avro, moved on to do similar work at the CAA. The book is in two parts covering the employment for each organisation and their different work. It also includes his student years and what ‘made the man’. This could be considered a bit unnecessary but it is fairly central to the story as this readable book could be given to sixth formers and undergraduates to encourage them to study STEM and consider a career in engineering as is it can lead to an interesting and rewarding life.

The book has been made interesting, as the author has had the good sense to follow the writing style of his favourite author, Roland White, who wrote Vulcan 607, the story of the Falklands Vulcan. Because the author was an Avro man you can see why he had the interest. The result is a book you do not want to put down but rather turn the page to see what happens next.

His life at Avro (later HS) included flight testing of Victor tankers, Avro Vulcan, Avro 748/Andover series, Shackletons, HS 146 and the much more complicated Nimrod MR1 and R. This was a fairly diverse set of aircraft. Each had to be flight tested as prototypes, early production samples or for experimental changes. The reader will quickly acquire the idea of what flight regimes and failures have to be tested, how it is tested and why. The aerodynamic or stability effects of issues and configurations are explained, so the reader slowly builds up an increasing knowledge of the engineering of flight. The importance of cg movement is paramount particularly at the extremes of operational boundaries. The most dangerous tests were of failures at crucial moments such as an engine failure on take-off. He explains the aerodynamic effects that build up the problems in these situations and how they can be controlled by a skilled test pilot. Some of the stories could have ended in disaster.

All his work was done before the days of digital computers, magnetic tape recorders and telemetry, so he would have to occupy a workstation in the fuselage with a bank of repeater dials that were photographed at an appropriate rate up to many times a second. Later, back on the ground, analysts would view the developed photos to write down the readings on charts.

By contrast, after his move to the Civil Aviation Authority as a flight test engineer, the story is about confirmation testing of numerous types manufactured around the world for certification in the UK. Most of the smaller overseas aircraft types seem to have disappeared to obscurity but a few remain household names, including Concorde. Here the testing is of performance at margins and of critical failures to validate the manufacturer’s results. Sometimes the team had to reject an aircraft type more than once. His list of 64 different types tested is given in an appendix.

After reading this book the layperson will better understand the focus of flight testing and how aircraft remain controllable and stable, what can go wrong and how the concern is tested and overcome.

If I have a criticism, it is the title which implies that there are lots of accidents. There are not but plenty of close shaves.

Eur Ing M A Stanberry
FRAeS