Empire of the Clouds: When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World by James Hamilton-Paterson

Empire of the Clouds: When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World Reviews

• 
  Geevee

  I bought this book as I have a interest in the UK's ability to design, build and operate aircraft from the start of World War Two and beyond into the 1970s that is born from reading about or seeing these aircraft in museums and for some at airshows.
  
  What I read was a story about Meteors, Lightnings, Vampires, Canberras, and of course the V Bombers: Valiant, Victor and the mighty Vulcan from concept to design to service. Alongside this is the axed BAC TSR2 and Fairey FD2 and many more that showed it was a far from happy and glorious time being sandwiched between an inefficient aircraft industry and politics.
  
  The industry was struggling to adapt to peacetime conditions after full scale war production and trading models designed for war, coupled with outmoded management, inefficient and dispersed logistics and manufacturing techniques.
  
  The politicians - accepting the Country was near financially ruined after the war - had seemingly little vision of the technical potential under their charge and very limited understanding of changing technologies and military requirements (and intellectual property) based on UK and alliance commitments at home as well as the important cash and employment generating export markets.
  
  The book tells the story of the men who designed and tested/flew British aircraft that had the potential to (and did in rare cases) be great successes in production and in use by the military. It also features the career of the Canadian Bill Waterton, one of the UK's finest test pilots, and his work and struggles to not only test ground breaking planes, but also to have his views and recommendations about them heard and noted to his final banishment from aerospace circles.
  
  Despite record breaking aircraft and industry changing technologies and designs the book charts the consolidation and disappearance of world renowned names and project cancellations at various stages of development and maturity.
  
  Anyone with a passing interest in how the UK aircraft industry faired after the Second World War or the iconic marques mentioned above will find this book interesting.
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  PJ Ebbrell

  Read this book and weep, if you are a Briton. The British Aviation industry led the world at one stage with some spectacular air craft, but we also had some amazingly bad politicos who would get the most brilliant aircraft up into the skies, only to see it cancelled. The author records all the highs and lows on that Indian summer of British aircraft. All so sadly gone and long forever.
• 
  Alice

  An account of the all too brief postwar period when Britain led the world in innovative aircraft design, and how that lead was irretrievably lost by a series of accidents and bad decisions. The author was captivated by thrilling air displays as a child in the 1950s, and his enthusiastic descriptions made me wish I could have shared this book with my late father, who got his love of fast, airborne metal from roughly contemporary experiences.
• 
  Ian Chapman

  A book about the post-war decades of the UK aviation industry. The sheer engineering magnificence of some of the aircraft, even a sort of beauty, and the courage of the pilots particularly test pilots, are well portrayed. A management lunch at one of the big companies, and a senior test pilot landing early to fit in with union hours on the shop floor, show the industrial inefficiency of the era also. And I also enjoyed the book simply because I can remember seeing and hearing some of these aircraft in flight.
  
  The book's title is a bit over the top in terms of reality, but there were strong aviation links with Canada and Australia at the time. It may also be an obscure comparison to the Japanese empire of the sun. Perhaps an expanded edition could have some more on civil aircraft, particularly the Vickers Viscount, although the Bristol Britannia is well covered. I liked Howard Hughes putting in an appearance to test fly the latter, although he didn't buy it.
• 
  Neil

  Wonderfully written, particularly evocative accounts of the daring flying manoeuvres (although credit for some of the descriptions of those belongs to test pilot reports and memoirs quoted here) and definitely captures the difference in culture between then and now. It was (although perhaps it shouldn't have been) something of a revelation to see how much war time practice and war time attitudes had carried over into the post war period. Even if at times some of the lackadaisical approach taken by governments and industry at the time beggars belief.
• 
  Andrew

  This is a pretty good read considering it has several agendas at play that might have conflicted. First off 'Empire of the Clouds' is a serious (if popular) history of the first 20 years or so after World War Two as experienced in the British aviation industry. This is broken down into three strands; the 'macro' aspects of this period, vis-a-vis the political and industrial powers and how they negotiated (or more relevantly failed to meet) the challenges of the period. Then there are the individual aircraft; some successes, like the English Electric Canberra and arguably the Hawker Hunter, versus the near misses and failures (notably the De Havilland Comet and TSR 2). Thirdly there is the story of the test pilots; men like Bill Waterson, Neville Duke and Roland Beaumont.
  
  Running parallel to these strands of aviation history is Hamilton-Paterson's personal perspective on the period, including his own nostalgic memories of Farnborough air shows and Avro Vulcan fly overs. This of course makes his narrative more immediate and perhaps more emotionally engaging, however for someone who is more interested in the history and less concerned with one person's views, it is at times a distraction. That the author merges the larger history and the more personal with more success than one might expect is an achievement to be respected.
  
  Overall the information that Hamilton-Paterson presents is interesting and he writes with sufficient skill to combine the technical with the anecdotal. For example, when discussing the problems associated with the Gloster Javelin he ensures that the development issues it faced are exemplified by the disastrous crash of one of the prototypes that almost claims the life of test pilot Bill Waterson.
  
  It is a little frustrating that certain aspects of the period's aviation history are ignored, such as the peak British combat period for most of the aircraft types the author considers, i.e. the Suez crisis of 1956. There are also several types of aircraft that aren't given due diligence, such as the Hawker Sea Hawk and the BAE Nimrod; it might have been helpful to look at these as well as the more 'sexy' hits and misses like the Lightning and the Swift.
  
  Finally, whilst one can't find much to fault with the author's arguments regarding the way the British aviation industry faltered during the first couple of decades after WW2, the interest he shows in the test pilots that flew the aircraft produced during this time is a bit of a diversion from these theses. Yes, they might provide a human face to what Hamilton-Paterson is saying, but surely the more important story is the failure of British policy makers and industrial leaders to realise what was going wrong and how they contributed to this gradual demise.
  
  These minor bugbears notwithstanding, overall 'Empire of the Clouds' is a great read for any aviation buff.
• 
  Kumar

  This book is my kind of non-fiction book: not too heavy, based on facts (not that I know anything about aviation except being a passenger, let alone its history) and spun as an interesting story. It is consistent from the start, and immediately I can feel Hamilton-Paterson’s since-childhood interest in planes and stuff and I know that this book has the potential to be a good one.
  The book loosely follows history’s footsteps and starts with the heyday of British Aircraft immediately post WW2 and slowly but surely descends into a period of structural breakdown (because of which I don’t remember the chronology at all). There’s a lot of material devoted to Bill Waterton, being James’ childhood hero, and it’s through this piece that I have a mental picture of how aviation companies descended into hopeless management practices (or already were there), which was part of the reason why Britain’s superiority in aviation declined.
  The other reason for the decline, which remained with me after finishing the book was government policies (though might have presented a little one-sidedly and without a more detailed comparison with other countries). 2 major government decisions, which were essentially behaviours of the government over the years condensed into a single impactful, debilitating moment - Sandys White Paper and the foresight of UAVs (I’m forgetting the name of the person here) plus their consequences were fantastically detailed. James summed it up perfectly: “a short-lived phenomenon that dazzled even as it was breaking up, leaving a trail seared across one’s mental retina and a fallout of dust’.
  
  Even apart from the focus on British aviation, there was so much to learn about the prevailing attitudes among pilots in general - the carefree attitude, and that too at a time when safety precautions for pilots were practically non-existent compared to today’s standards. Low paying and often strenuous, it’s nothing short of a surprise that there were pilots who gave their heart and soul to the industry, often at times literally. In this sense, there’s a remarkable similarity the way NASA built the road to its first mission to moon and the evolution of aviation industry to where it is today. At the very end, James recognises the hundreds of gravestones that were filled up to pave the way for the current standards where safety is important and it makes me realise that the book is more than an essay in nostalgia - the book is an evidence of remarkable achievements by people of passion sadly marred by incompetent oversight, and of golden moments in periods of decline, which makes Britain yet worthy of the nostalgia and fondness that its citizens accord it.
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  Bob Mobley

  Several weeks ago, while I was in London, on a Sunday night, watching BBC4, I saw this interesting and fascinating program about the British development of the jet engine and its influence from the whole world of aviation and global travel, as well as military applications for defense and offense. The program was based on James Hamilton-Paterson’s book. It was such a fine program, that I fell victim to the ease of buying books on Amazon with one click, and ordered myself a copy to be sent home to Boise, Idaho. This is a wonderful book, with superb pictures and an excellent text. For the general reader, it’s informative and entertaining, and you can dip into it as you see fit, gleaning from the chapters those parts and stories about aircraft and development and engineering, and the wonderful test pilots who flew the planes, as your appetite dictates. For the aviation enthusiast, I might consider this a must read book. It’s a big book, some of you might even call it a coffee table book. It would be great on a vacation, I’m not sure you want to travel with it because it might throw you over the weight limit, jet engines not withstanding. The pictures alone make the book worthwhile, a highly unusual collection of fascinating airplanes and their evolution into supersonic flight. I recommend this book to someone who wants a journey and exposure to an interesting time in history that most of us really don’t know much about, yet touched by every day, the age of jet travel.
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  Roger Boyle

  John gave me this to give to someone else. I'll give it to Peter.
  
  It's all about the British aviation industry (military and civil) in the period 1945-1970. Having emerged from WW2 with enormous skills in aviation (not least jet technology), 25y later it has fizzled almost to nothing. JH-P lays the blame at the very poor structure of the industry, archaic RAF thinking and misguided Government opinion, all compounded by a country on the financial rocks, at the same time that the US and USSR and gung-ho for development. He notes that the French aero-industry did not disintegrate as the UK one did.
  
  I enjoyed this as I learned a lot about aerodynamics (especially near Mach 1) that I never knew, and also how aero-engineering and testing is "done" (or, at least, was done before sensible simulation became routine). JH-P also makes regular reference to the nature of the times (the generation of "New Elizabethans" which I can just chime into) which reads quite well. Full of anecdotes - the one about Prospero is good, as is the airshow disaster of Ch 1.
  
  Of course, it's not an entirely unbiased account, and more than once descends into a hagiography of Winterton, although this may be justified as history has neglected him badly.
  
  Don't read this if you have no interest in engineering.
• 
  Bryan Wigmore

  A hugely engaging read about a fascinating topic: the weird and wonderful designs of the first jets, the struggle to understand the problems of supersonic flight, the appalling loss of test-pilots' lives, the rivalry with the Americans and the French, the squandering of engineering brilliance and pilot bravery by inept government and indifferent management -- it's all here. In different hands, this could have been an annoyingly "boy's own" book, but though the author has the ability to retrieve his schoolboy enthusiasm from sixty years ago, he does at the same time often poke gentle fun at it. Having said that, some of the best bits of writing are his recollections of watching these craft at air displays as a kid. I saw Buccaneers and Vulcans at Goodwood in the late 70s, and he brought it all back.
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  Paul M

  As with so much UK technology and science, this is the story of mis-management, back-stabbing and lack of successive governments support for the Crown Jewels of the UK aviation industry.
  Multiple examples of other countries being ‘gifted’ Hard-won research and developing those ideas and taking credit for it. And amidst it all, a cadre of brilliant pilots willing to risk their lives to make it all work!!
• 
  Alex Vesco

  One of the best books I’ve read on aviation. If not the best in terms of the history of the post war British aviation industry. It’s excellently written and the author does not mince his words with the politicians who wasted so much talent and financial investment to bring about the decline of the British aviation industry. Highly recommend.
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  Michael Heath-Caldwell

  A close examination of the advanced aeronautics industry in Britain after World War II, well clear of most rivals, and how this industry was lost due to incompetence and a major dose of snobbery. Far more interesting than I would have anticipated.
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  Mark Schulz

  Fascinating story by James Hamilton-Patterson of the decline and destruction of the British aircraft industry. Full of stories of larger-than-life characters who were the test-pilots of the era.
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  Alastair Hudson

  This book is far more readable than you'd imagine. A tale written from research and first hand experience and by someone who loves airplanes. The author is around the same age as my father and this book explains why my father loves planes and why I attended so many airshows as a child: Every school boy in early post-war Britain had this obsession. Like the author, my father read the Eagle comic as a child with it's futuristic space planes and cut-away drawings of aircraft. My grandfather had been involved with Dehavilland and my father started out there as a "fitting" apprentice, slowly working up the scale until he got to the drawing office. Faced with the prospect of not getting much further he left.
  
  So I too grew up with a love of the old V-Bombers and Lightning Jets and recall carefully drawing pictures of aircraft from copies of Janes' at about five years old. I was also lucky enough to see one of the last flights of the Vulcan after it took off from Elvington and flew around above one of the barracks in York.
  
  This book was like removing the veil of mystique that surrounded all those ghosts of my past. It was great to have the genesis and technicalities of these aircraft explained and heartbreaking to see how appalling mismanagement squandered a bright future.
  
  MJ Wiener's book "English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980" describes how the British don't really have much interest in building business empires or working at all; that all they really want to do is to retire to the countryside and enjoy a vapid life as one of the landed gentry. Hamilton-Paterson describes this problem strikingly in his book - company leaders not really taking any interest in what their business is doing so long as they can have a long lunch.
  
  Britain has a problem that an unending chain of governments has not helped nurture new business sectors enough. Likewise many small business' struggle to gain funding from Banks as it's easier to prop up the larger firms ('better to not risk loosing a long lunch...). Much of our industry has disappeared through the sort of indifference and neglect described in this book. The only industry that does get government support seems to be Finance... noteworthy that this is probably the only sector that can still support long lunches that end in Port and Whiskey. But finally, thanks to Brexit, it looks like this industry is likely to disappear too. Good riddance. Then maybe we can all start again and do what we do best without the incumbent "ruling class" getting in the way. (It's important to keep hope alive...)
• 
  Jim B

  This rather interesting book is a combination memoir, biography of Canadian test pilot Bill Waterton, and indictment of the British aviation industry. Hamilton-Paterson tells the story of a bloated industry that started out with such promise, but was able to squander that promise through inefficiency, political meddling, and just plain ignorance. (It is shocking to read just how many prototypes were scrapped just before flight testing was to begin.) Oddly, it seems the engineers were successful in-spite of themselves and the RAF never insisted that they had a functioning product before taking an aircraft on strength. (For example early Hunters that couldn't actually fire their guns.) The sections on Bill Waterton are quite eye opening in that his employer Gloster seemed to not value any of his input as Chief Test pilot. Cockpit ergonomics, heck at times pilot safety, didn't appear to be of much interest to the industry. (Let alone paying a living wage.) There area few hilarious stories, such as the Valiant being built on a field without a runway that the Valiant could be operated from, the the need to end flight testing in order to not miss lunch. It appears that many British lament the failures of their aviation industry, and often blame the politicians, but it appears that they were only part of the problem, and there was much blame to go around and much of it may be placed on the aviation companies themselves. A fascinating and enjoyable, but very British read.
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  John Marley

  
  
  One of the most enjoyable aircraft books I've ever read. I can't rate it highly enough. It gives an era (that I've always found fascinating) a human face- one of bravery, sacrifice and technical mastery. A glimpse into a proud past and a sad glance towards an uncertain future. A truly great book.
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  Edward James

  An exhilarating and frustrating overview of the post-war British aviation industry and history. So many amazing achievements, and yet so often were they thwarted by lack of foresight, money, and by politics. Well worth a read if you'd like to get a feel for the atmosphere of that 'golden age' of British aviation development in the 1940s-1960s.
  
  Enjoy!
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  iain meek

  A strange personal account of one man's coming-of-age and his hero test pilot. Much about the decline of the British aircraft industry but may not be exhaustive- as the author is sat pains to make clear.
  
  Very sad that Britain has declined so far in manufacturing and appears still to have equally dodgy management practices.
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  Alex

  A fascinating account of the triumph and tragedy surrounding the development of the UK's aviation industry in the 1950s. It is sobering to think of the sacrifice and errors which led to so many deaths in the name of progress.
  
  Highly recommended to anyone interested in military history or the development pf technology.