Page Giant, Signed (2 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. Unread book is tight & square with a complete number line including ". The mylar protected DJ is price-intact ($28.00) and is lovely as well. Book was Signed & Dated "10/14/17" by the author, on the title-page in my presence, at The Twin Cities Book Festival in St. Paul. Signed & Dated by Author on Ti.

"Sales/posting to the USA suspended". Hard cover dust wrapper, 192pp, b&w plates. Very light wear to edges of dw/boards, signed by author on title page; a fine copy. An exhaustive yet highly readable account of the history of the Handley Page O/100, the improved O/400 and the vast V/1500 through their conception, development and service. The book's title of course refers to the famous request to Handley Page for a 'bloody paralyser' of an aircraft for the Royal Naval Air Service, which fits with the subsequent notion of the giant Handley Pages as Britain's first strategic heavy bombers - though the reality is not quite that simple. There are a number of surprises on first reading Bloody Paralyser, not least that there are actually two competing stories about how the 'bloody paralyser' appellation originated. In any event, it was clear that the thinking of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was ahead of its time in requesting an aircraft so large and with such load-carrying ability. Langham reveals the aircraft were not originally intended as strategic bomberl. The initial concept was for a battlefield weapon that could act as a form of long-range artillery, heavily armoured to protect against ground fire, inspired by the 1914 siege of Antwerp in the coastal zone that the RNAS had responsibility for. Another aspect of the narrative is just how early the giant Handley Pages were conceived, given that few aircraft of such great size existed in 1915. Langham charts the development of the aircraft from its original battlefield conception to an aircraft that, shorn of its performance-sapping armour, became a machine that could fly above the range of small-arms fire and carry a large bomb load far beyond the lines, well into Germany by the war's end, almost by accident. The fact that the Handley Pages began their operational career as naval aircraft is brought home in wonderful details such as the classification of air gunners as 'Gun Layers' and the use of specially constructed 'lighthouses' across the Western Front as navigational aids.