Here we have, two years later, the companion volume to Air-Britain's Auster: The Company and the Aircraft. The original title gave the history of the company, both as Taylorcraft and as Auster, profiles of the aircraft types produced and plenty of tabular data. This follow-up offers no narrative descriptive text but goes straight in at the deep end with the history of every Auster built. Each entry gives a construction number, serial/registration, ownership (and changes of ownership), significant life events and status or fate. The treatment is rigorous; only in the case of the Israeli Defence Force/Air Force, which acquired 21 Austers from RAF stocks, and of licence-production in Portugal is there, as explained, significant conflicting information about identities. Photos, some in black-and-white, some in colour, are well-chosen and well-reproduced, but printed small. Interspersed are a few Auster advertisements of old, one marvellously understated example extolling the Aiglet Trainer as "One of the Best and Cheapest aerobatic trainers". An appendix gives production figures for each model and comes up with the surprising, not to say impressive, grand total of 3,697 Austers built.
展开▼
