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Sixtieth anniversary of the 1960 booklet Helicopters ABC

At the end of the 1960's, after school, your Aeromedia chief editor often went searching among the second-hand bookstalls along Corso Siccardi in Turin. He was looking for aviation books and magazines of all kinds. One day he bought one of the "ABC" booklets produced by Ian Allan entitled "Helicopters", published in 1960 when John W. R. Taylor was its chief editor. It was a typically meticulous reference book in true British editorial tradition.

The 63 page booklet contained not only the illustrated data sheets of conventional helicopters but also those of a series of rotary-wing vehicles of various types. There were flying cars, motorcycles and boats, sports aircraft transformed into helicopters, flying saucers, a large box-shaped fan boat, tilt-rotor and fan-duct aircraft, small backpack rotorcraft, an intersecting rotor vehicle capable of launching a torpedo, large VTOL cylinders, tilt wing convertiplanes and even one able to transform itself into a jet fighter and so on. In the Introduction, the editor managed to insert such machines into five precise categories.

During the 'Fifties, besides the traditional helicopter manufactures such as Agusta, Bell, Hiller, Kaman, Sikorsky, Sud Aviation, MIL and Westland, other companies entered the promising rotary-wing sector. These included the Curtiss-Wright engine manufacturer and conventional aircraft manufacturers such as Bristol, Cessna, Fairchild, FIAT, McDonnell and Short besides the blimp maker Goodyear. A plethora of wishful start-up new entries - soon destined to sink into oblivion - also tried to grab a share of the rich military procurement market. A final fitting homage goes to those brave test pilots who risked life and limb in so many contraptions with dubious flight qualities. (download book)

(Aeromedia, June 2020)