Typhoon to Typhoon is the fifth book in Chris Gibson’s series of books on British aircraft projects and weapons for Crecy. Sadly, there isn’t really a name for this series.
Vulcan’s Hammer (V Bombers)
Battle Flight (Air Defence)
Nimrod’s Genesis (Maritime Patrol)
On Atlas’ Shoulders (Transport)
Typhoon to Typhoon (Air Support)
As compared to the Secret Projects books, Chris’s books have more emphasis on the weapons and sensors intended to be carried (built and unbuilt), the wider context in which the projects sit, and explaining some of the relevant technologies that were developed related to the topic.
Typhoon to Typhoon covers the operational requirements, procurement and development of the aircraft and weapons intended for RAF air support of ground troops., with some discussion of analogous systems from the USA. It has 240 pages including an index. The chapters are not entirely chronological, they are also thematic.
Chapter 1 describes the threat, with details of the Soviet ground and theatre air defence forces.
Chapter 2 covers WW2 RAF air support studies and the tension between what the Army wanted and the RAF was prepared to deliver.
Chapter 3 covers Hunter replacements; NMBR-3 and P.1154.
Chapter 4 covers weapons intended to defeat tanks, mainly AST1227/AST1238.
Chapter 5 covers SEAD and anti-runway weapons.
Chapter 6 covers battlefield reconnaissance and surveillance systems.
Chapter 7 covers light attack projects such as WSRA, MiniCAS, SABA.
Chapter 8 covers multirole aircraft to be tasked with air support up to Tornado.
Chapter 9 covers the many proposals to AST.396 in its different iterations.
Chapter 10 covers the AST.403 requirement and its development into Typhoon.
Appendix 1 discusses armour and armour piercing shell technologies.
Appendix 2 is about ‘base burning’ for drag reduction and its possible application to aircraft.
Appendix 3 has a discussion of “gunships” like the AC-47 Spooky,
The book is beautifully printed, well illustrated (with lots of colour) and laid out in a pleasing 2 column justified layout, like previous books in the series. Excellent artwork by Luciano Alviani (paintings) and Luca Landino (CGI) helps to visualize the unbuilt designs, while Chris Gibson has redrawn many original drawings for clarity and created many charts, diagrams and timelines to help illustrate the story. The research behind the book is impressive, with plenty of designs which were new to me and previously unpublished. The text is well written, authoritative yet very easy to read and sprinkled with quotes from original source documents.
My personal favourites were the NMBR.3, AST.396 and AST.403 chapters (due to my personal interests), but there’s plenty of other interesting stuff throughout the book. There are many unbuilt variants of existing aircraft, a lot with interesting "nosejobs", which could be very interesting to modellers.
I wasn’t completely sold on Chapter 1, but I understand the purpose of its inclusion for the more general reader. Also some of the drawings are reproduced a little small, but I don't have a fix for this other than drastically adding to the page count (or sacrificing content elsewhere). These are however very minor points, and don't detract from the book in any way.
Overall, this book is highly recommended for projects fans and anyone looking for an in depth look at the development and procurement of RAF air support assets since World War 2.