French Secret Projects 1: Post War Fighters OUT NOW!

Hood said:
Just seen a Crecy advert in Aeroplane Monthly that states Vol.2 will be published in February 2017. Is this a bombers companion?
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I have also seen the advert, let's hope it is a bombers companion.
 
Well, a Vol.2 about bombers :)

A drawing or model of the Mirage IV four jets project ? ;D
 
can we see here this drawing, or other Mirage IV projects, this is new level to learn about french secret projects
still waiting on delivery for book
J cant wait to this moment
 
Had an email from Amazon.UK that the book has been despatched, so its on its way :)
 
Delivered

Quick look through it and its the style pf the recent US SP WW2, and looks good :D
 
Could you post a photo of the contents index, please?
 
Geoff_B said:
Delivered

Quick look through it and its the style pf the recent US SP WW2, and looks good :D
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As an owner of that book that's great news - modernisation of the SP book format to be welcomed.
Waiting for the dispatch email (and the book itself) with baited breath....
 
Got mine today, had a quick flick through and found some interesting projects I had no idea about. Just one complaint; not about the book, but why did the French have to call so many aircraft Mirage it gets really confusing trying to keep them all straight!!!
 
Thanks JohnR.

It seems that I can order mine now :D

For the answer about your question, I guess that as the Mirage (III) was a success, the name was seen as more "marketable" ::)
 
Monsieur Carbonel, votre nouveau livre, il est magnifique! B)

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well worth l'argent, and cinq étoiles....
 
C'est un accomplissement magnifique historique.
Je veux voir ce livre magnifique tôt. ;D
 
Thank you for the kind words ! You have an advantage on me : you have the real book while I am still waiting to get my copy (I hope to have it this evening).

I figured many of you had the Cuny books so I tried to dig as many new projects as I could, with the help of a few friends and going through the old archives.

The complaint about all the "Mirage" was voiced years ago by a reviewer of Flight (or was it RAF flying review?) but about the "Mystère". But this is only relevant for the major Dassault designs. The lesser Dassault designs like the one on the cover just had cryptic letters+numerals designations. And then there was Nord-Aviation which did not bother even naming most of its projects, just labellizing them "Fighter", "Bomber" or whatever ...

Vol 2 text is very advanced and will cover :
- bombers of all kinds including the "black program" Minerve
- assault aircraft and COINs
- low-speed VTOLs
- weird stuff like the Ludion or the Norapter flying armoured car (Nord is supposed to have designed a VTOL tracked vehicle but it was so hush-hush I have not yet been able to find an illustration of it)
- maritime patrol and assault transports.

JC carbonel
 
Good news ! ;D

And

JC Carbonel said:
(...)
- bombers of all kinds JC carbonel
(...)
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something (model/s, drawing/s) about the four engines Mirage IV project... ?::)
 
"B58" Mirage IV : of course... but also Mirage IV 3seaters, Mirage IV C etc...

JC Carbonel
 
Wonderful ! ;D

I have ordered the Volume one. I'll get it between the 2nd and the 12 of September B)
 
I received my author' s copy today . I am really happy with the finished product.
There are
- over 200 2 or 3 views drawings
- 43 artist impressions / cut-aways
- 50 model and mock-up photographs
- 100 photos of full-size aircraft

JC Carbonel
 
Got mine and am thoroughly delighted with it. I am eagerly awaiting Volume II.
There is a mine of information and leads for further hunting. Bien fait, Monsieur!
 
Got mine today, great book, to much fine drawings, pic... and more, still to wait volume 2
 
JC Carbonel said:
....... Vol 2 text is very advanced and will cover :
- bombers of all kinds including the "black program" Minerve
- assault aircraft and COINs
- low-speed VTOLs
- weird stuff like the Ludion or the Norapter flying armoured car (Nord is supposed to have designed a VTOL tracked vehicle but it was so hush-hush I have not yet been able to find an illustration of it)
- maritime patrol and assault transports.

JC carbonel
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I see that Amazon.co.uk have it down already ;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/French-Secret-Projects-Bombers-Aircraft/dp/1910809063/ref=sr_1_120?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1472907820&sr=1-120

French Secret Projects 2: Bombers, Patrol and Assault Aircraft
Hardcover
– 15 Jun 2017
by Jean-Christophe Carbonel (Author)

As early as 1944 France began the task of re-building its military aircraft industry and developing high performance aircraft for its armed forces. In doing so, French aircraft manufacturers produced some of the most innovative and outlandish bomber projects, proposals, designs and prototypes of the Cold War era.
Many French bomber projects started life in response to proposals from the French armed forces. Others were originated by the industry itself, it was also not unusual for rejected fighter designs to be entered in bomber competitions. Furthermore, if national organizations were not convinced of the validity of the industry proposals, or if the military still could not find any use for the technology being proposed, or if the budget was cut, manufacturers might modify their proposals in an attempt to obtain alternative funding from America (Mutual Defense Assistance Act), Germany or NATO. The result was a huge variety of bomber aircraft designs. In some cases a machine rejected for one specific military role could be modified with new avionics, engine or armament and reappear to succeed in another role.

As France became a nuclear power, its requirement for nuclear strike aircraft (such as the Dassault Minerve V) grew, and many projects for advanced strike aircraft, including Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) designs, followed. Turbojet, ramjet and rocket propulsion and supersonic designs were all researched, sometimes taking advantage of captured German wartime technology or using national pre-war research.

Companion volume to the acclaimed French Secret Projects 1; period drawings, promotional art, photographs of prototype aircraft, mock-ups, wind tunnel and promotional models are all combined to present, in French Secret Projects 2, a comprehensive view of French military bomber and strike aircraft designs from the Liberation of France to the late twentieth-century.

.
 
the cover art was finalized yesterday ! Amazon , like Lucky Luke, is shooting before its shadow !

JCC
 
I got it ! ;D

Well, what can I say...

I cannot read 261 pages in English in some minutes or even hours. I'll need days, maybe weeks. And I'll need surely a long time too to compare with my, most in french, old files (articles and books and in particuler the two Cuny books from 1944 to 1960), to compensate my memory.

to do it short :
This book is a synthesis of a lot of files (articles or books), but not only. There is a lot of new too.

If some of the readers could be disappointed because of relatively short détails about some known planes (the lovers of the Mirage 4000, for example) there is too unknown news about others (for example designs or photos) and a lot of unknown planes too. For example, I loved the Dassault's part of the Mach 3 chapter. It's in the same time a complement and sometimes a progress to the well known article of Alexis Rocher in Le Fana 461 from April 2008 (in particuler for the lovers of the MD-750, like me ;D).

In the same time too we have maybe news about planes that we searched on SecretProjects. For example, I believe that the plane of the page 266 was known here as a Dassault or AFGV project, but it's a Sud-Aviation project.

I have a lot of questions in mind (in particuler for the Dassault part of the Mach 3 chapter) but it will be probably better to ask all after the complete reading of the book.

Well, I don't regret my money for this book and I'm already a supporter of the next :)
 
Deltafan thank you.
The limited coverage given to "known" aircraft was a choice of mine. I tried to give approximatively the same size to each entry (be it a Mirage III variant or an obscure Matra project), otherwise it would have been a book on known aircraft only. You must know it was a combat during the last two monthes to fit everything I had collated in the number of pages allocated to me. Initially I had about 1 000 illustrations but in the end the policy was one design = one illustration (of each type : three-view drawing, art, cutaway, model / mock-up photo, real proto). I did not follow this completely but I got rid of many photos of prototypes. Specifically for the M 4000, colour pictures of "desert camo" M4000 had been planed for a chapter on "what-if" exports. Unfortunately this chapter was dropped in the name of making room for something else.
I also tried to reduce the coverage of machines already seen in the Cuny books (but then I could not drop them completely!). You will notice also that the number of Coleoptère designs is reduced to a quite symbolic amount...but I have already written a book on the subject. So yes I had to make choices and I focused on a few designers who may have "second fiddles" to the people at Dassault or SNCASO but whose designs had also remained in a comparative obscurity until now : people like Roger Robert, Hurel (better known for high aspect-ratio transport/recon aircraft than fighters), Caillette, the people at ONERA etc...
My estimation is that out of approximatively 200 designs, 20 to 25% have been published (or re-published as some of them appeared in period publication to go into oblivion about immediatly after that) here for the first time.

JCC
 
Monsieur Carbonel,

I fully agree with your selection criteria. Well done.

A pity that commercial criteria doesn't allow a 10 volume set to freely include all the information collected by the author because I'll buy it for sure. But it's understandable.

Still waiting for my copy but I think I'm going to enjoy a great reading!

Antonio
 
Thanks for your very interesting answer M. Carbonel :)

pometablava said:
(...)
A pity that commercial criteria doesn't allow a 10 volume set to freely include all the information collected by the author (...) But it's understandable
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I agree, it's a great lost of informations for the readers... :(
 
Have the book! All what I expected is there (and much more)..
Despite much is already published about French projects in the Docavia series
Le fana and Air Enthusiast etc. , the author produced a lot of surprises and wonderfull
information in his first volume.Highly informative text with a flood of illustrations.A book written and produced
in the style pioneered by Tony Buttler...

May we hope for a volume about French Projects between the wars...?
 
lark said:
May we hope for a volume about French Projects between the wars...?
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Yes my dear Lark,and as I suggested before about this book,but maybe they will
wait until TU magazine finished its publishing for Les Constructeurs Francais 1919-
1945 articles,and then appear.
 
I'll gladly have the TU do a special issue putting all the "les constructeurs français" articles together and leaving me doing something else ... Fun is "going where noone has gone before" like for the Coléoptères and some of the chapters of FSP Vol 1

JCC
 
JC Carbonel said:
I'll gladly have the TU do a special issue putting all the "les constructeurs français" articles together and leaving me doing something else ... Fun is "going where noone has gone before" like for the Coléoptères and some of the chapters of FSP Vol 1

JCC
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Sorry JC Carbonel,

I didn't mean any offense,but the TU magazine's articles have many unknown Projects,and also the TU team forget a small
numbers of Projects,so it can help rather than any sources.

Of course you are one from the best authors in the world,and I like all your books.
 
Ah but I think you misunderstood me too. I just think doing a book on a subject which has been done before is not as fun as doing a book on a subject entirely new. So, yes I would like to read a book on "between the wars French projects", but if it just to compile what the TU has done before, it would not be too fun. And if you ask me today, I know I would have very little to add to their work so I'll rather have the TU people write it and me read it. Counting the model history projects, I have more than a half-dozen book projects on hand so I think I have my hands full and I happily leave those who begun researching a subject go to the end of it (here the TU guys and "between the wars Projects").

May be we should go back to the 1945-1985 projects ?

Incidentally those who already have the FSP/1 book may have noted I threw in a few 1940-44 projects.

JCC
 
Even though Amazon-US says it will be nearly a year before it comes out, I went ahead and pre-ordered Volume 2. I've already pre-ordered Volume 1 and I'm just waiting on them.
 
From what I understand at Crécy the target date is end Q1/2017
Things will be clarified after Telford, I think. And I will also know if there is a Vol 3

JCC
 
Too early to talk about it. I have a few ideas but you can write off missiles, I know nothing of the subject.
JCC
 
JC Carbonel said:
Too early to talk about it. I have a few ideas but you can write off missiles, I know nothing of the subject.
JCC
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Is that french Military Missiles for Aircraft or more ICBM SLBM SRBM and Launch Vehicles ?

we have all lot french stuff lying around here in this Forum...
 
I get my copy today.
What a wonderful book it is! You made my day. :)
 
My congratulations & thanks to the author for a job well done; bravo :)
Facinating well written book, highly recommended.
Can't wait for the Bomber book in 2017, only down side is the wait :)
 

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