Books about test flying Hawker stuff

Of all the test pilot authors I cannot be without Eric Brown, Neville Duke, Roly Beamont and the controversial Bill Waterton on my shelves.

Don’t forget Wings of the Weird & Wonderful Vols 1 & 2 by Capt. Eric Brown.

Vol. 1 has the Sea Fury and P 1052, Vol. 2 has the Sea Hawk.

I enjoyed Beamont’s Testing Early Jets.
In it, he’s surprisingly objective…never calling the Hunter a “world beater” (a phrase seemingly unique to UK aviation writers :)) and admitting it was in the Sabre class but half a generation later by not entering RAF service until 1954.

Beamont, not Beaumont, purely in the interests of finding the titles easier rather than pedantry!

Here’s a list of his books:

‘Phoenix Into Ashes’. A Career Account. Roland Beamont.

‘Typhoon and Tempest At War’. A Pictorial History. Roland Beamont and Arthur Reed.

‘Testing Years’. A Test Pilots Story. Roland Beamont.

‘English Electric Canberra’. Designing, Testing, and Flying the Canberra. Roland Beamont

‘English Electric P1 Lightning’. Designing, Testing, and Flying the Lightning. Roland Beamont.

‘Fighter Test Pilot’. Testing Fighters from The Hurricane to the Tornado. Roland Beamont.

‘My Part Of The Sky’. A Fighter Pilots Experiences 1939-1945. Roland Beamont.

‘Testing Early Jets’. Compressibility and Supersonic Testing. Roland Beamont.

‘Tempest Over Europe’. Flying the Tempest in Combat. Roland Beamont.

‘Flying To The Limit’. Reminiscences of a Career in Aviation. Roland Beamont.

‘The Years Flew Past’. Retrospective of a Life of Flying. Roland Beamont.

in addition myself and a friend did his wartime flying logbooks but this does not cover his test-flying period and I don’t think I copied those pages in the end. Kicking myself for that now of course as I had all his logbooks bar the one lost with the fall of France in my possession for some time.

Sorry did not put any Roly Beaumont titles on previous post…
Hawker flying is also in his book ‘Phoenix into ashes’

rgds baz

I have 3 titles by Roland Beamont in my Bookshelf. None are purely about his test flying, but are good reading anyway.

My part of the sky ISBN: 1-85260-079-9
The years flew past ISBN: 1-84037-299-0
Typhoon and Tempest at war ISBN: 0-684-15701-2 (Arthur Reed & Roland Beamont)

Also:

Tempest, Hawker’s putstanding piston-engined fighter by Tony Butler ISBN: 978-1-905414-15-6

Regards
Roger Rasmussen

Test Pilot by Neville Duke is the obvious answer !

Edit – looking at my bookshelf – Roly Beaumont also flew at Langley with Hawkers as a test pilot during a ‘rest’ period !