Wings Over Dorset
Aviation´s Story in the South
Dawson, Leslie
This is the first full history of one hundred years of Dorset's crucial contribution to aviation history. Supported throughout by unique photographs, the exciting story ranges widely:
• A Victorian MP was lost in a balloon flight off Bridport and ended up on a Spanish mountain.
• Bournemouth's first pilot went to France before the pioneer flyers - including C.S. Rolls, who crashed to his death here — held an international meeting at Southbourne.
• In the Great War pilots were trained in Dorset and the county gave the Air Force its first flying Victoria Cross.
• The Schneider Trophy Race was held off Bournemouth, and Ensbury Park air races brought the finest pilots to the south.
• Between the wars the cruel seas off Portland claimed the world's only submarine aircraft carrier.
• There was aerial combat over Dorset through the hot summer of 1940 as Warmwell's Spitfires fought the Battle of Britain.
• Radar cover which gave victory to Fighter Command was developed at Worth Matravers and Christchurch.
• Poole Harbour was the birthplace of BOAC and the nation's main airport to the Empire.
• Wartime development of the largest, tank-carrying, glider took place in Dorset, which sent the first glider troops into Normandy on D-Day. Men from Tarrant Rushton were the first Allied soldiers to set foot in German-occupied Western Europe.
• American pilots flew from the southern airstrips - Warmwell, Hurn and Christchurch - in support of the Invasion.
• After the war the Bournemouth Airship attempted the first revival of lighter-than-air flight in Britain.
• Sir Alan Cobham's collection of former bombers supported the Berlin Airlift from Tarrant Rushton.
• Alan Cobham's pioneering of air to air refuelling technology also revolutionised long-distance flights and in 1982 was crucial to the success of the Falklands War in the South Atlantic.
• Wartime Hurn arose to become Bournemouth's international airport of the South - contrasting with the picturesque hilltop airfield at Compton Abbas.
Hardcover with dust jacket, large format
247 Seiten / pages
many photos
very good condition
England - 1989 - Dorset Publishing Company
Art.Nr. 239
