Blackburn Buccaneer Books

[Mossie]

Can anyone tell me of a decent book on the Buccaneer, especially one that includes proposed developments?

Ta much!

Simon.

[Thorvic]

Mossie

Buccaneer by Tim Laming is quite good on the development and inservice details including some test armament shots.

If you want propossed Buccaneer ugrades and developments then Roy Boot's  "From Spitfire to Eurofighter" is best for that as he was involved in the program from the start.

Cheers

Geoff

[Mossie]

Thanks Geoff, I've got the Tim Laming one on order at Amzon & I found that a local shop have From Spitfire to Eurofighter on sale on Amazon Marketplace.  It's two minutes from where I work) I'll pop in on my dinner hour & see if they've got anything else that looks good too.

EDIT On the Thunder & Lightnings site there's the statment:
Buccaneer - The Last British Bomber by Tim Laming. Recent revelations mean we can no longer advise purchase of this volume.
Any idea what it's about?  Sounds a bit cloak & dagger.  

[nev]

There's also the WAPJ WOF volume with the Bucc as the feature a/c, includes a 3-view of the proposed supersonic variant.

[Nick]

EDIT On the Thunder & Lightnings site there's the statment:
Buccaneer - The Last British Bomber by Tim Laming. Recent revelations mean we can no longer advise purchase of this volume.
Any idea what it's about?  Sounds a bit cloak & dagger.

They say the same thing about his "The Vulcan Story 1952-2002" on the Vulcan pages. And his V-bomber book on the Victor page.
These are good books in my opinion.

I cannot find anything online regarding his works (inaccuracy, plagiarism, copyright, ghost authoring etc) so I wonder if this is some sort of personal feud?
It could just be down to the books being hard to find but that would be rubbish cos T&L list all manner of out of print books as references.

BTW, it's Wings of Fame 14 you want for the Bucc article. I do have it if you want to read it at Telford, might even be able to photocopy it if it gets quiet at work.

Nick B)

[overscan]

Spitfire to Eurofighter is essential reading if you don't have it.

[XV107]

The Thunder & Lightnings de-recommendation (which isn't a word, but, hey...) is an odd one, and was the source of some puzzlement over on Pprune.

Laming posts over there under the name Tim McLelland (which, I believe, is how he is now known) and put it down to personal dislike by the Thunder & Lightnings site owner. The latter chap did have a spectacular falling-out with the Pprune site owners a while ago and was banned  - possibly for good, IIRC - which suggested a willingness to be forthright, a quality Mr Laming also displays. May have been a chemistry clash.

Alternatively, Laming/McLelland is working on a new Vulcan book which is due out soon, and it might simply have been that the news of this was the 'revelation', suggesting that the availability of more archival material, recollections, etc, etc made the earlier book obsolete. There was no suggestion that there'd been any plagiarism/wilful misrepresentation/etc, etc.

On the subject of Buccaneer books, there is one by Kev Darling in the Crowood series. However, Air Cdre Graham Pitchfork, who knows a thing or two about the mighty beast, pointed out a litany of errors in a review he did for the RAF Historical Society journal recently. Pitchfork's own book on the Bucc (in the same series as Ian Black's Last of the Lightnings) is good, IMO, although IIRC, it doesn't go into proposed developments.

[nev]

The author in question is known as "Chox" on ARC and is an arrogant, opinionated, boorish troll.  

When he first started posting there not 1 but 2 Brit ARCers PM'd me to warn me about him and how he'd been banned from a couple of other aviation forums, and it didn't take long to see why.  He remains the only person I've ever put on "ignore" on a modelling forum    

[XV107]

He has his moments on Pprune as well, but usually gets inserted firmly back into his box  on such occasions...

[Mossie]

Picked up From Spitfire to Eurofighter yesterday, the shop had closed down but they still do book fairs & e-bay.  They happened to have a stall at Hull Uni (where I work) the day after I rang, very fortuitous!  Bought the book for £7, in very good condition, which I put in a bag with my dinner (lunch to anyone not from Hull & some parts of the north, our dinner is called 'tea' just to confuse you!) I bought from the SU shop.  Got it back to find the bottle of Blackcurrant flavour Oasis had leaked.           .  Fortunately, the damage wasn't too bad.

Thanks for the reccomendation guys, it's chock full of stuff, especially Blackburn projects which I'm very happy about as I live within 20 miles of what's now BAE Brough.  I'll let you know when the other book comes.

[Thorvic]

Hi Simon

Thats why we recomended it, as a whiffer the project stuff makes it a must buy, and the Buccaneer propossed updates are all well described.

The P145 upgrade drawing is in prject cancelled, but its the other subtle ones such as the CAS version and the earlier interceptor proposals like the P108 and P112 that are really handy   .

Pity about the soft drink, but as long as its readable you should be ok.

The actual books on the Buccaneer mainly focus on the original program proposals that eventually led to the Buccaneer and not the later propossed developments and variations .

G

[Mossie]

Thanks again Geoff, yeah, it's good to have some more info, compliments what I've already got with Project Cancelled & BSP.  The other stuff's nice too, like the various AEW proposals & even a simple whiff like the Beverley Car Ferry would be nice, I'd have a go at that if I had the cash for the Magna kit!

It'll be good to get hold of a book purely on the Bucc, I do like the tough little feller.  To be honest, in most aviation books any info on proposed development pre & post production is a bonus, unfortunatley ours is a niche interest & doesn't get covered that often.

[DamienB]

Laming posts over there under the name Tim McLelland (which, I believe, is how he is now known) and put it down to personal dislike by the Thunder & Lightnings site owner. The latter chap did have a spectacular falling-out with the Pprune site owners a while ago and was banned  - possibly for good, IIRC - which suggested a willingness to be forthright, a quality Mr Laming also displays. May have been a chemistry clash.

For the record, now I've been made aware of this thread: when I was a poster on Pprune, I regularly contributed posts of airshow pictures I'd taken, for some years. Then one of their mods arbitrarily decided my copyright notice on my shots was 'commercial advertising' and started removing my posts at random. I pointed out he himself had reposted some of my shots - without permission - in another thread, and asked why he was happy with my pictures when it suited him. To cut a long story short, I refused to remove the copyright message, eventually it came to a head and I asked them to delete my membership. He then announced I was banned. C'est la vie.

The Laming issue is another one as explained elsewhere.