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David Edgerton

England and the Aeroplane: Militarism, Modernity and Machines Paperback – 4 April 2013

by David Edgerton (Author)

3.6 46 ratings

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The story of the strange mixture of romanticism, militarism and technology that has made planes so important to England, from the brilliant author of Britain's War Machine

The history of England and the aeroplane is one tangled with myths - of 'the Few' and the Blitz, of boffins, flying machines, amateur inventors and muddling through. In England and the Aeroplane David Edgerton reverses received wisdom, showing that the aeroplane is a central and revealing aspect of an unfamiliar English nation: a warfare state dedicated to technology, industry, empire and military power.

England had the strongest air force in the Great War, the largest industry in the world in the 1920s, outproduced Germany by 50% at the time of the Battle of Britain and was the third largest producers of aeroplanes well after this time. In a revelatory recounting of the story of aeronautical England, from its politics to its industry and culture, David Edgerton reconfigures some of the most important chapters of our history.

Reviews:

'A brilliant polemic' Guardian

'Full of good stories ... an illuminating read' Spectator

'A tour de force, after which the history of the aircraft industry will never be quite the same again' Business History

'David Edgerton's sure-footed essay ... sees Britain from an unusual perspective ... His arguments provide sound backing for the idea that modern Britain is as much a warfare state as a welfare one' Economist

About the author:

David Edgerton is Hans Rausing Professor at Imperial College London, where he was the founding director of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. He is the author of a sequence of groundbreaking books on 20th century Britain: Science, Technology and the British Industrial 'Decline', 1870-1970; Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970; and Britain's War Machine, published by Penguin. He is also the author of the iconoclastic and brilliant The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900.

Print length

288 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin
Publication date

4 April 2013
Dimensions

13.34 x 1.91 x 19.69 cm
ISBN-10

0141975164
ISBN-13

978-0141975160
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Review

A brilliant polemic ― Guardian

Full of good stories ... an illuminating read ― Spectator

A tour de force, after which the history of the aircraft industry will never be quite the same again ― Business History

David Edgerton's sure-footed essay ... sees Britain from an unusual perspective ... His arguments provide sound backing for the idea that modern Britain is as much a warfare state as a welfare one ― Economist

About the Author

David Edgerton is Hans Rausing Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Professor of Modern British History at King's College London. He is the author of a sequence of ground-breaking books in 20th century British history: Science, Technology and the British Industrial 'Decline', 1870-1970; Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970; as well as Britain's War Machine, and England and the Aeroplane, both published by Penguin. He is also the author of the iconoclastic and brilliant The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin (4 April 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0141975164
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0141975160
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.34 x 1.91 x 19.69 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 179,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 163 in Aerospace & Aviation Technology
- 193 in Aviation History
- 254 in 21st Century Britain History

Customer reviews:
3.6 46 ratings

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David Edgerton

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David Edgerton is the Hans Rausing Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Professor of Modern British History at King's College London. He is the author of a sequence of ground-breaking books on twentieth-century Britain: England and the Aeroplane: An Essay on a Militant and Technological Nation (1991), republished as England and the Aeroplane: Militarism, Modernity and Machines (Penguin 2013); Science, Technology and the British Industrial 'Decline', 1870-1970 (1996), Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970 (2005), Britain's War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War (2011) and The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: a Twentieth-Century History (2018). He is also the author of the iconoclastic and brilliant The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 (2006), which was re-issued in 2019.

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John S. McDonald

A challenge to conventional thinking.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 January 2021

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Not having read this when it first came out('90's) it was clearly a polemic but intelligently written seeking to offset certain views of "Eng;and". His main focus is on science, technology and economics in relation to aircraft production...but it sustains hiswider thesis of the role of the "warfare" state rather than the "welfare " state as typically English.
A fuller historical development of the thesis is in his The rise and fall of the British nation(a 20th C, History)

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 January 2016

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Not as interesting as I'd hoped.

2 people found this helpful

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FG

Worth a read, revisionist approach.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 March 2015

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Perhaps more of an essay than a full history, certainly represents the facts in a new light - so Britain was not so old-fashioned and wary of technology after all. Useful to get that learnt. Not really only 'England' but makes for a snappier title one imagines.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 March 2015

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Used this book for an online course I took

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England and the Aeroplane

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 June 2013

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As a self confessed aero anorak I found this book fascinating. It gives a thorough examination of the growth and decline of the English, (as he says in the book, most of the firms involved were within the Home Counties), Aircraft Industry. He praises the suceesse, like the Spitfire, and condemns the turkeys, like the Fairey Battle, it shows how closely the companies were involved with the Government, in the specification and buidling of the aircraft involved. It is essentila reading for anyone interested in aircraft, the Second World War and the politics of the period.

2 people found this helpful

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Ae1

Myths debunked

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 July 2013

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Excellent, balanced and objective survey of how the British aircraft industry really developed. The crucial role of government and state in the pre WW2 era is made very clear and this history demolishes the unlikely myths of government incompetence which held sway for too many years.
Highly recommended

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Douglas Victor

Flawed and unreliable

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 August 2019

I bought this book because I thought it might provide leads for research that I am doing. Unfortunately I can't commend it as a source of reliable information because it simply isn’t. As a Scot, I suppose I could be biased because of the professor’s insistence on claiming that aviation was principally English and not British. Nevertheless, I have relatives who were wartime aviators and who held senior influential positions in the Air Ministry despite not being ‘English’; the idea is odd to say the least. Furthermore, the professor has clearly not heard of the first aviator who suggested and demonstrated that the aircraft would be useful to the British Army. He was Scot. Continuing on the same theme, he says that “the scientific and technological resources on which the industry drew were largely English”. Nowhere does he mention the adoption and development of radar thanks largely to Sir Robert Watson-Watt, nor the contribution made by Professor R.V. Jones; the first was a Scot, the latter a Welshman. Radar was, of course, a complete game-changer in the use and effectiveness of aircraft. In connection with this Edgerton does not mention that air navigation had been a rather despised and neglected aspect of flying for much of the 1930s (Sir Francis Chichester, Flight Magazine). Whilst German bombers had their radio aids as described by R.V. Jones, British bomber navigators were initially usually NCOs using dead-reckoning, pilotage and excessively difficult astro-navigation. It wasn't until late 1940 that more sophisticated aids, including radar, started to enable bombers to find their targets with any accuracy. U-boats would also be detected by radar.

For some reason he is determined to denigrate the aircraft-maker, Short Brothers. He says that Shorts produced "one of the worst bombers of the war so inefficiently that they were nationalised" (p.116). Whilst he suggests that this borne out by C.H. Barnes in his very thorough "Shorts Aircraft since 1900" it is a rather strange interpretation of what Barnes actually says. The aircraft, the Stirling, is in any case a first generation bomber, produced to an Air Ministry specification. At the time there was some doubt whether a large bomber could get off the ground but Shorts said it could, thanks to the invention of the Gouge flap. Then bizarrely, the Air Ministry insisted its 112 foot wingspan be reduced to 100 feet simply to suit their hangars. Despite impacting the performance of their design, Shorts had to comply.

He makes no mention of the very successful Short Sunderland flying boat, the 'flying porcupine' that played a huge role in combatting the U-boat menace.

On page 125 he says that wartime expansion was "beyond the managerial capacity of the firm". He quotes Barnes, saying that “the general manager and chief designer Arthur Gouge ‘being used to shipyard methods, lacked the imagination necessary to embark on really massive production’ During the war the performance of the firm was consistently poor”. He clearly adapted this idea from Barnes, who actually says: “After several changes in the Stirling programme during 1941 the situation in Shorts was being somewhat unfavourably contrasted with rationalised production methods and lower unit costs achieved elsewhere.” By elsewhere, Barnes explains he means the motor-car industry under Patrick Hennessy of Fords!
It should also be borne in mind that the chairman of Shorts, Oswald Short, was in poor health and his older brothers and partners were both dead. Furthermore, their factories at Rochester and Belfast had both been heavily bombed. Today, thanks to the professor’s book, Wikipedia claims that “[Shorts] continued to obstruct the government” using Edgerton’s book as a reference. Barnes says “Short Brothers did their best to meet the Ministry’s fluctuating demands.” After the war Arthur Gouge was given a knighthood.

The author argues that aviation was a very right wing activity but fails to mention the remarkable and very right wing aviator, Charles Lindbergh. Why?

Whilst he is an admirer of the Lancaster bomber he makes no mention of its earlier manifestation the very unsuccessful Manchester powered by twin Rolls Royce Vulcans that proved underpowered and unreliable. The last marks of the Manchester would be given 4 Merlins and in effect became Lancasters. The name was changed to remove any association with its unsuccessful predecessor.

I have given the book two stars because it does contain items of interest but when there is so much to criticise it's unwise to take the writer's word for anything without checking it. It is also not especially readable.

3 people found this helpful

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Frances Louise Wilkinson

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 October 2014

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Excellent service, well packaged and excellent book. Recommended.

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