Best Spitfire book

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Member for

15 years

Posts: 1,712

Does such a book exist for the Hurricane? :)

"Hurricane at War", Francis Mason's "Hurricane", "Hurricane special" (Ian Allen ). Nothing like the depth of coverage as the Spitfire but no doubt there will be something I've missed .

Member for

15 years 4 months

Posts: 957

Mason's second attempt is the best overall but has a number of blindspots. (His very old one from Monogram has performance information you won't get anywhere else, but is pretty well unobtainable now.) As a second choice I'd list Rys' book from MMP, smaller but covers the subject well. The Haynes Manual is pretty good for technical information on the early aircraft. The Arms& Armour reprint of the Mk.II Manual is worth picking up. There's a number of works that present good examples of walk-arounds and sets of plans, for example the 4-volume set from AJ Press, which is particularly notable for the large and high quality presentation of the photographs with a large range of 1/48 plans. The Crowood book is not in the same class but worth considering as part of a collection.

Member for

11 years 5 months

Posts: 11,141

The 1961 edition was the second reprint and just had a few corrections. I would go for that one.

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There are some reasonably priced 1961s on Amazon....

Member for

15 years 7 months

Posts: 674

Fortunately I own the Morgan/Shacklady, Spitfire International and Vol 1 of Survivors, as well as others. Question is where to find Vol 2 of Survivors.

See there is one copy of Vol 1 on Fleebay.

Member for

19 years

Posts: 923

Does such a book exist for the Hurricane? :)

Dr Jon Leake is working on it for Air-Britain. A long way off but it will be THE definitive Hurricane book.

Member for

20 years 7 months

Posts: 18,353

Well, I dunno about anyone else, but I've pre-ordered the Hurricane Survivors book. I'm looking forward to getting my mitts on it!

Member for

15 years

Posts: 1,712

Yep I've ordered one too.

Member for

20 years

Posts: 1,587

The 1961 edition was the second reprint and just had a few corrections. I would go for that one.

Mark

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Thanks Mark. I bought a 1961 signed copy in very good condition. Really detailed and comprehensive. :-)

Member for

11 years 2 months

Posts: 180

Without disagreeing in any way with previous choices I've found Alfred Price's [I]The Spitfire Story [I] to be very useful as well. As far as the Hurricane is concerned some sections of Sydney Camm and the Hurricane by Dr. John Fozzard has been helpful too. But I do agree that the Hurricane deserves a very thorough consideration that will also include analysis of the Hawker company records about the reasons for some of the original design decisions.

Example; the Lewis gun installations on the fuselage / cockpit side shown on the original mock up in the Kingston works? How about a photograph and more detail of the DB 601 engined example built in Yugoslavia or didn't it really exist?