JUNKERS Ju 52/3m

Success beyond the LuftwaffeBy L Andersson et al

EAM Books EEIG, 3 Gatesmead, Haywards Heath RH16 1SN, UK (E order@eambooks.com). 2018. 416pp. Illustrated. £35 (inclusive of UK postage/packing). ISBN 978-0-95737443-0.

In their latest tome on Junkers aircraft – the Ju 52/3m – the authors firstly explore the life of this legendary aircraft in the Spanish Civil War, during the Nazi regime and WW2. When the code word ‘Dädalus’ went out, Lufthansa returned its Ju 52/3ms to Germany and handed them over to the Luftwaffe. Boxes of parts, each marked for specific aircraft, were already strategically positioned around the country for the rapid militarisation of each aircraft.

The authors’ aim thereafter is to fill the ‘glaring gaps’ in the Ju 52/3m history after the war and this fills the main part of the book. As they say, German aviation history research requires painstaking and time-consuming research, piecing together fragments of information from many different sources. These authors are meticulous

in their research work and are scathing of so many under-researched books which perpetuate erroneous information. They realise, however, that much archival material that is now available in Germany was not so in the past but say that this does not excuse poor research.

As usual, the authors have done their work well and have produced over 400 pages of text, liberally illustrated with many excellent photographs, many unfamiliar or rare. I especially liked the photographs showing aircraft structures, cockpit and engine installations. There are also 33 pages in colour, illustrating many airline logos, military insignia, celebratory postage stamps and plenty of photographs and drawings in colour (a modeller’s dream).

The index is largely aimed at finding specific countries, airlines and organisations that used the Ju 52/3m. Sensibly, these users of the Ju 52/3m are in groups in the text, making the story easier to assimilate and enjoyable to read.

This book will satisfy both those seeking fine details and those who enjoy leafing through a book and keeping it for reference. I commend it to all aerophiles, not least because of the wonderful illustrations, meticulous text and detailed records.

Antony Kay

I commend it to all aerophiles not least because of the wonderful illustrations, meticulous text and detailed records

Swedish float-equipped Junkers Ju 52/3m, SE-ADR, Södermanland.

Below: The rear cabin of a Junkers Ju52/3m supplied to Prince Bibesco in 1932. RAeS (NAL).

Book Reviews

AEROSPACE44

ONE NATION, UNDER DRONESLegality, Morality, and Utility of Unmanned Combat SystemsEdited by J E Jackson

Naval Institute Press, 291 Wood Road, Annapolis, MD 21402, USA. 2018. x; 245pp. Illustrated. $29.95. ISBN 978-168247-238-5.

One Nation, Under Drones is an excellent primer on unmanned systems and the legal and ethical debates surrounding them. The book is a collection of 13 short essays by a diverse range of military and civilian experts on drones. Roughly half of the essays discuss in great detail the history and current development of unmanned military systems on land, in the air, and in and under the sea. In these chapters the book is at its best. They will prove tremendously illuminating to all but the closest observers of developments in unmanned military systems. They provide a rare window, not only into state-of-the-art military technology, but also the strategic and policy imperatives driving it. Very helpfully, the book also features black and white photographs illustrating 25 of the unmanned systems discussed.

The remaining chapters discuss the legal, ethical, and policy questions surrounding the use of drones for targeted killing, the development of autonomous weapons and the challenges posed by the exponential growth of non-military drones for commercial and private use. While much of information and arguments in this latter group of chapters will be familiar to both experts and the reasonably informed observer, their quality and the range of topics they cover make them a very useful compendium to the historical and technological discussions.

The book begins with an illuminating and exhaustive account of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developments that place the more well-known Predator and Reaper drones in historical context. The opening chapter gives design details and applications for drones ranging from the 14 gram Black Hornet and the 2.5kg AeroVironment Switchblade to the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk with a wingspan of 130ft and the rotary wing Lockheed Martin K-Max, capable of delivering 6,000lb of cargo at sea level. For all but the closest observers of developments in military UAVs, the opening chapter will serve as an illuminating survey of the current state of play.

Several subsequent chapters enrich the opening picture. They show how the consumer, rather than the military, market is driving innovation, especially in the incorporation of greater autonomy in unmanned systems. They add an important international perspective by discussing development of drones in China, Israel, the Soviet Union and Russia, as well as

the export of drones to countries ranging from South Africa to Sri Lanka and N Korea. They also feature in-depth discussions of the unmanned systems being developed for the US Navy and Marines.

Although these chapters are primarily focused on technology development, they also give illuminating insights into the strategy and policy behind the developments. For example, the Afghan war is shown to have been an impetus for military drone development and acquisition by nearly a dozen countries fighting alongside the US against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In the discussions of naval and marine unmanned systems, the authors emphasise the extent to which the development of ship-based equivalents to the land-based Predator drones has been driven by a desire to give the US Navy global reach without the need for land bases. A subsequent chapter echoes this idea, arguing that the US Marines perceive the need to be able to operate from sea-based launch sites because land-based airfields cannot always be relied on, as they are sometimes denied for political reasons. That is, the US military is seeking enhanced capabilities to operate without the need for land-based allied co-operation.

The remaining discussions of the lethal, ethical, and political questions surrounding unmanned and autonomous systems are both thoughtful and generally accurate. Although the authors tend to defend the use of lethal combat drones and the development of autonomous weapons, they do so cautiously. They point out that drones, like any weapon, can be used unlawfully, unethically, and/or unwisely. They thus point to the need to focus on the context and rules governing the use of such weapons, rather than the weapons themselves. Similarly. with respect to autonomous weapons, although the tenor of the discussion is generally optimistic, the authors caution that any machine learning algorithm is only as good as its ‘training’. Thus, great care must be taken both to ‘train’ such machines without unintentional biases and to deploy them only in context for which they have been properly trained. For readers interested in delving deeper into these debates, the footnotes for each of the essays direct readers to further reading, including sources that disagree with the positions taken by the book’s authors.

APRIL 2020 45

Joshua AndresenSenior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in National Security and Foreign Relations LawUniversity of Surrey

Overall, the collection contains a wealth of technological material that will be useful to those working in these relatively specialist fields

General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft system. USAF.

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46

Book Reviews

AEROSPACE

Edward M Young

devotes most of the rest of the book to chapters on the aircraft that the Merlin powered, covering the Hurricane and Spitfire, the Mosquito, Lancaster and P-51 Mustang. The author returns to the Merlin story in the penultimate chapter on Merlin variants, including the Packard-built Merlin, and concludes with a chapter on preserved Merlin engines still flying today.

Throughout he celebrates the Merlin as ‘the greatest Second World War piston engine ever’, but doesn’t explain why the Merlin was so much better than other candidates for that accolade, nor why the Merlin faired poorly in the postwar years compared to the big Bristol, Pratt & Whitney and Wright air-cooled radial engines that dominated military and commercial transport aircraft until the jets came into service. The difficulty with the author’s approach is that, by focusing on the aircraft, the author loses the thread of the Merlin’s development. Numerous errors mar the book.

The author’s conclusion that the Merlin was ‘the engine that won the Second World War’ is problematic at best. There is no question that the Merlin was one of the finest piston engines ever built and made a vital contribution to Allied victory in WW2 but to say that the Merlin won the war is a stretch. The Merlin was necessary but not sufficient.

THE MERLIN

The Engine that Won the Second World WarBy G A A Wilson

Amberley Publishing, The Hill, Merrywalks, Stroud, Gloucestershire GL5 4EP, UK. 2018. 272pp. Illustrated. £18.99. ISBN 978-1-4456-5681-6.

This book is a disappointment. The objective of the book is to present a history of the development of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine and its use during WW2. The focus of the book, however, is less on the Merlin and more on the famous aircraft it powered. Unfortunately, in telling this story the author merely refashions material that has already appeared elsewhere. He does not appear to have had access to the records of the Air Ministry or the Ministry of Aircraft Production which might have provided greater depth to his story. The book adds nothing to our knowledge of this famous engine.

The author begins with an overview of the origin of the Merlin, providing a detailed history of the Rolls-Royce Company and its liquid-cooled aircraft engines of the 1920s and early 1930s. A chapter follows on how Rolls-Royce developed the Merlin from the experimental PV-12 engine. The author

Hawker Hurricane IIC, MW336, under construction. RAeS (NAL).

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Zeppelin Raids and Anti-Airship Operations 1916-18By M Powis

Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Books, 47 Church Street, Barnsley, S Yorkshire S70 2AS, UK. 2018. xii; 300pp. Illustrated. £25. ISBN 978-1-52670-249-4.

As the author explains in his introduction, this book is a continuation of his previous work Zeppelins Over the Midlands (Pen & Sword Books. 2016) but is in itself a stand-alone work.

It begins by describing the various types of airships used by the German Army and Navy, something of their methods of operation and the types of weapons they employed, followed by a series of chapters that record in chronological order the various air raids and other operations undertaken by these craft between August 1914 and November 1918.

The day-by-day reports of bombing raids are not of themselves very detailed, usually giving only short descriptions of the particular airship used, the target and the outcome, which, generally was not very successful as far as the airships and their crews were concerned. However, they do provide a useful starting point for more detailed research and show that airship raids were not just confined to the bombing of England and European cities but also operations on the Eastern Front in Russia, the Balkans and in the Baltic.

In between these reports are useful chapters on the use of radio location for tracking enemy airships,

the development of fighter aircraft and long-range flying boats to attack the airships in the air, the Lewis gun and the various types of incendiary bullets designed to set fire to the hydrogen-filled airships.

What is particularly apparent from this book is that, despite the enormous effort made by the Germans in attempting to create a new weapon of war, the airship proved to be a failure, with 78% of the airships listed recorded as being destroyed by anti-airship operations, bad weather or accident.

Despite some factual errors and a need for more careful editing, this book is recommended as a research tool for anyone studying the history of the development of the airship as a weapon of war.

Brian J TurpinMRAeS

APRIL 2020 47

THE DEFEAT OF THE ZEPPELINS

Above: The wreck of Zeppelin LZ 76 (also designated L 33), which was torched by its crew after making a forced landing at Little Wigborough, near Colchester, Essex, after sustaining serious damage from anti-aircraft shells and British fighter aircraft, returning from a bombing raid over London on 23 September 1916. British Library.

NATIONAL AEROSPACE LIBRARY

Further to the UK Government’s guidance, the National Aerospace Library will be closed to external visitors as of Friday, 20 March, to ensure the health and wellbeing of our staff,

members and volunteers.

Our online services remain available so you can continue to browse the catalogue and download e-books (see p 57) as well as contact our expert

Librarians for advice and enquiries.

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