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Author(s): Alec Brew
The old Norwich firm of Boulton & Paul began building FE.2b aircraft in 1915 and then Sopwith Camels. Their own design department, started in 1917 under Chief Engineer J. D. North, earned a reputation for innovation. They built the first all-metal aircraft delivered to the RAF: the P.15 Bolton, the largest aircraft ever built in Great Britain at the time; the R.101 airship; and a series of superb medium bombers, the last of which was the Overstrand with the world’s first powered gun turret.
Moving to Wolverhampton as Boulton Paul Aircraft, they produced the famous Defiant fighter and a range of gun turrets, which led to them becoming world leaders in flying power controls and fly-by-wire.
Their last production aircraft was the Balliol trainer, the first single engine turboprop in the world to fly. Merging with Dowty in 1960, the company was taken over several times and eventually became part of GE who sold the product line to Moog Aviation who still operate in Wolverhampton today.
| BOOK ISBN | 9781781557518 |
| FORMAT | 248 x 172 mm |
| BINDING | Hardback |
| PAGES | 404 pages |
| PUBLICATION DATE | 02 March 2020 |
| TERRITORY | World |
| ILLUSTRATIONS | 392 black-and-white photographs |
Alec Brew is an aviation author with over thirty books published, including a dozen on local aviation history. The founder of the Boulton Paul Association, Brew organised the preservation of their Balliol cockpit, serial WN149, now incorporated in a full-scale model of the aircraft at an RAF museum. He is the co-ordinator of Wolverhampton's Tettenhall Transport Heritage Centre where a further two Balliol cockpits have been preserved and are to be restored.
