Almost right, the book will be launched at Duxford on Sunday 16th Oct at Tony's stand in the book sellers area, he'll be there all day. Signed copies only available through me or Tony's website (Google him).
From Tony:
This book is about an aircraft which was arguably the best reconnaissance aeroplane in the
world until it was scrapped prematurely by the government of the day under great financial
duress but, unfortunately, leaving the country almost defenceless from a long-distance maritime
reconnaissance point of view.
It is written especially for the general reader, rather than for Nimrod specialists, though I
hope that they will read it with interest and enjoy it. Not many people realise what a great job
the aircraft did because so much of its work was classified. Conversely they can’t comprehend
what a great loss it is to this country. My aim in writing this book is to let everyone know what
a superb aircraft it was and tell a few stories of all the things it could do.
A wee taster from the Prologue (1980 vintage):
“‘Radar to standby. Climbing’. As the airspeed bled back towards 230 knots and we started to
regain the radio signals from the sonobuoys further away in the field on only our second climb
to height, the lead wet underwater equipment operator came on the intercom, ‘Captain – Jez.
We’ve got an interesting line on buoy 14.’ ‘Yet another nuclear-powered Grimsby trawler’ I cynically
thought, instead of a submarine, wondering why we hadn’t detected it visually or on radar
as we laid the buoys.
“Maintaining RF contact, we gradually dropped down to low level, drew a blank on the
radar, and supplemented the field around buoy 14, shortly after which the AEO came on the
intercom reporting further buoys in contact and a classification of ‘Possub, Confidence Level
4’, and an identification of the suspected class of the Soviet hunter-killer submarine that we
were firmly in contact with, and which was tracking.....
There is a lot more to the book though, including 140 colour photos within the text:
CHAPTER 1 NIMROD FROM START TO FINISH
CHAPTER 2 HISTORY OF ANTI-SUBMARINE WARFARE
CHAPTER 3 NIMROD MR2
CHAPTER 4 NIMROD ANTI-SUBMARINE AND ANTI-SURFACE UNIT WARFARE
CHAPTER 5 NIMROD SEARCH AND RESCUE SORTIES
CHAPTER 6 LAND BATTLES AND SPECIAL SORTIES
CHAPTER 7 THE FALKLANDS CAMPAIGN
CHAPTER 8 NIMROD ACCIDENTS
CHAPTER 9 NIMROD AEW
CHAPTER 10 NIMROD MRA4
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX 1 A TYPICAL DAY IN THE LIFE OF A MR2 CREW
APPENDIX 2 GLOSSARY AND ACRONYMS
APPENDIX 3 NIMROD TIME LINES
APPENDIX 4 COMPARISON BETWEEN MRA4 AND MR2
APPENDIX 5 MOD DEFINED TASKS FOR THE NIMROD
INDEX