Hendon's Supermarine Stranraer

Praising a Putnam book James – do you need to go and lie down? 🙂

Hi Alastair,
I can’t advertise here, bad manners… But have a browse around the website by the link I gave, and you’ll be able to answer your questions! Feel free to PM me for a more personal answer. We try and keep the price down.

As for more books. We WERE going to include the Supermarine Southampton as well originally, but lack of drawing data, and detailled tech info stopped that – and we decided to do more on the other two a/c. I’d like to do something on other flying boats. Grumman seaplanes. Yum. It’s an idea. Other British; Short Sealand. Yummy. Trouble is, who’d buy it? Alastair, what f/bs do you want?

James,

Sorry about the 6 month delay in replying – managed to lose the thread somehow 😮

As for other flying boats – I’d really like to see something on the Saro flying boats – the Cloud and the Cutty Sark. (Yes, I do like the really obscure ‘planes…)

Admittedly, there’d probably only be 5 people in the whole world who’d buy it, but we can dream can’t we?

Cheers

Alistair

Hi Albert,

Many thanks for the compliment.

We were looking to include the Southampton in the book, but in the end decided to do 2 better than three briefly. The Southampton is a possibility for the future, but would be difficult to do as even the RAFM had to ‘guestimate’ much of the info so they could rebuild the tail on theirs.

A ‘Supermarine Schniders and family’ would be a good potential book, but, as ever, we have more projects than authors. Anyone feeling brave, willing to get involved, feel free to PM me, or I can be contacted through the MMP Books website.

We are collecting info on the Walrus and the Stranraer for a big book on each, so we’d love pics or stories on either.

Anything’s possible in an infinite universe!

Incidentally, the Putnams on Supermarine is a good book. There are some errors on Walrus serials, and marks (which doesn’t help the saga of wooden Mk.II vs Metal Mk.I confusions) and the text rambles a lot in the thirties, but it’s a good read, and mostly bang on.

Cheers!

There are some aircraft types that are very poorly documented and thanks to JDK, this is an invaluable reference. Now how about working through all the other Supermarine types?

Nice pic Benyboy.

No appology needed.

My book is selling well BTW. Buy now while stocks last!

www.mmpbooks.biz

😀

Sorry to drag this thread back up but I thought this might be of intrest,

Hi Alastair,
I can’t advertise here, bad manners… But have a browse around the website by the link I gave, and you’ll be able to answer your questions! Feel free to PM me for a more personal answer. We try and keep the price down.

As for more books. We WERE going to include the Supermarine Southampton as well originally, but lack of drawing data, and detailled tech info stopped that – and we decided to do more on the other two a/c. I’d like to do something on other flying boats. Grumman seaplanes. Yum. It’s an idea. Other British; Short Sealand. Yummy. Trouble is, who’d buy it? Alastair, what f/bs do you want?

Walrus fans. Track down the GWR Nicholl book ‘The Supermarine Walrus’ Rare but great. And I’d second Brian’s reccomendation of ‘The Accidental Airline’. Great read. Lots of politics too! And for Wartime Stranny stories, try ‘Jericho Beach’.

Feet (really) wet,
Yours 😀

I’m really looking forward to this book – are you taking pre-orders, James? And are you going to be doing any more books on flying boats?

Cheers

Alistair

or old.

M

Yes Melv, but old enough and with time enough to play with these new fangled computer(“compooter”). things. 🙂

Albert Ross: Forgive me but I couldn’t resist having a play with your wonderful shot of CF-BXO, even at low resolution, on what looks like a pretty murky day.

Mark

PS Words adjusted on Robbo’s advice for the younger element. 🙂

The joy of being un-employable. 🙂

Mark

or old.

M

Dave. Books, magazines, chat etc will continue to have a role, and info will remain tied to money in the future too…

Cheers!

Yep, you’re absolutely right. The problem is for me, at the moment I’m not tied to money. Doh! 🙂

I have to say though your book looks very reasonably priced for such a specialist subject. Looks good too.

I just love photographing old junk aircraft.

The Stranraer and the Hampden at the Canadian Museum of Flight – August 1986.

I left the blue haze in the last one – couldn’t resist it. 🙂

Mark

Which is why you should be cautious about info from websites! It’s not out yet (because I should be proofing it rather than typing this message) It’ll be October.

And it’ll have stuff that can’t and won’t be published on the internet because I don’t have permission to do that. The internet, a wonderful tool, making more info avaliable to humanity than we’ve ever had access to before, will only be able to hold some, never ‘all’ inf, Dave. Books, magazines, chat etc will continue to have a role, and info will remain tied to money in the future too…

Cheers!

For the full info buy the book: Walrus & Stranraer by one Roger Wallsgrove & yours truly MMP Books (http://mmpbooks.biz/books/8391717895/8391717895p.htm)

Cheers!

Funny, following the link I found “Release date: September/October 2004”, so I looked on amazon.de for the book. Result: “Sorry, all sold out. Try to get an used one…” 😮

The Canadian Museum of Flight has the centre and rear fuselage and portions of the wing for CF-BYJ (RCAF 915) that crashed and sank in Belize Inlet in BC. Last time I seen the Stranny it was stored outside at the museums storage facility but last I heard one of the museums members is now storing it for the museum at his place.

I think the museum also had part of the rear fuselage and engines and prop from the wreckage of CF-BYM (RCAF 949) that crashed in Sovereign Lake in Northern BC. The remains of this aircraft seem to have disappeared when the property it was stored on was sold. Rumour has it that the new owner had a local scrapper haul it away, but of course, this is only a rumour. A friend of mine visited the Sovereign Lake site a year ago and found a few more parts of CF-BYM.

If your interested, there’s a book called “The Accidental Airline” by Jim Spilsbury and Jim White which is about Queen Charlotte Airlines and includes stories of flying the Stranraer’s. It’s a good read.

As for CF-BXO, this aircraft was a Super Stranraer sporting the 1000hp Wright 1820 Cyclone engines.

Hope this helps.

Brian….

Stranraer colour pics

This prompted me to look in my slide collection and dig out these three shots of CF-BXO at Sea Island, Vancouver on 4 May 1964.

Enjoy!

Lovely kit the Matchbox Stranny.

If you look up the link I’ve provided, you can get (free over the internet) some tempting profiles, pics and a few words too.

Enjoy.

Hmmmm … good reason for digging out my matchbox stranraer kits. 🙂

Top thread, great posts….. 🙂
The expanse of knowledge of ‘forumites’ never ceases to amaze…… 😀

That’s a great story Robbo, thanks for sharing it. Wow, it would be great to see that film he mentions.

I’m looking forward to seeing those slide scans Mark. 🙂

Thanks James for the info too. Much appreciated. The Stranraer is merely something I have been curious about since I visited Hendon in 1993. Till then I’d never heard of a Stranraer. So although I commend you for your efforts in recording the history of this aircraft, in a book which I’m sure is very good, I doubt I’d ever need to buy the book. I am very aware of Aeroplane Monthly and the publishers Putnam, but if you could see the price of books in this country you’ll realise why looking up obscure info on the internet instead of rushing out and buying a hard copy is the best option.

Even if I wanted a book on the Stranraer or many of the subjects we discuss here,l I doubt that I’d ever find one in a local bookshop, and it is unlikely you’d find such books even in a good library these days, although I make frequent use of the university library. You lot are very fortunate in Britain where you have excellent ranges of books available for cheap prices. We don’t. Thanks to the internet and the small population, and the distance most books have to be freighted, booksellers carry little stock and only mainstream stuff mostly now. These days if I want a book (which on my budget is rare sadly) I have to use the internet to buy it anyway. It’s always cheaper ordering from abroad, or second hand. To me, bookshops are almost obsolete. I hate to admit it, I used to buy lots of books when I was richer. But that seems the way of the world nowadays. Hopefully this will explain why you seem to think I never read books and ask too many questions. 🙂