mburnamfink's review
4.0
This is the most British book that I've ever read. Its about as British as Queen Elizabeth stepping out of a TARDIS to hand you a nice cup of tea. Coster promises a story of engineering and aviation derring-do, with a team of clever tinkerers pulling a state-of-the-art flying boat out of the Belgian Congo at the start of the Second World War. There's about three chapters of this, and the rescue of the Corsair is surprisingly straightforward.
What this book mostly is is a mediation on nostalgia, and the brief years when a luxurious flying boat service held the Empire together. For their time, the Empire-class flying boats were as advanced as aviation got, with four engines and a cockpit full of electronics. But the innate design of a flying boat involves compromises: weight, aerodynamics, corrosion, and the whole class never had a chance post-war. What Coster does is interview the 80+ year old veterans of the flying boat service, crew and passengers, and tries to reconstruct some of the magic for a nation that somehow forgot to save even one of its grand dames. He also bounces around Africa, where the desperate race to stay in the present, and the light footprint of flying boat operations, means that locals don't believe such a thing ever existed, and visits Kodiak Island and the Florida Keys, where in remote areas flying boats serve as local delivery vans. There's shocking little left of passenger flying boats (for some reason Coster entirely ignores water bombers), but he manages to conjure up a few glorious ghosts.
Go in looking for engineering heroism (like I did), and you'll be disappointed. Go in looking for magic, and this book might suit.
What this book mostly is is a mediation on nostalgia, and the brief years when a luxurious flying boat service held the Empire together. For their time, the Empire-class flying boats were as advanced as aviation got, with four engines and a cockpit full of electronics. But the innate design of a flying boat involves compromises: weight, aerodynamics, corrosion, and the whole class never had a chance post-war. What Coster does is interview the 80+ year old veterans of the flying boat service, crew and passengers, and tries to reconstruct some of the magic for a nation that somehow forgot to save even one of its grand dames. He also bounces around Africa, where the desperate race to stay in the present, and the light footprint of flying boat operations, means that locals don't believe such a thing ever existed, and visits Kodiak Island and the Florida Keys, where in remote areas flying boats serve as local delivery vans. There's shocking little left of passenger flying boats (for some reason Coster entirely ignores water bombers), but he manages to conjure up a few glorious ghosts.
Go in looking for engineering heroism (like I did), and you'll be disappointed. Go in looking for magic, and this book might suit.
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