BRISTOL FASHION ( Missing dust jacket - 50 % )

Foreword

by SIR W.R. VERDON SMITH

Chairman, The Bristol Aeroplane Company Limited

The Bristol Aeroplane Company Limited has this year completed its fiftieth year in aviation. In common with others whose links with flying reach back to the early days of powered flight, we have been thinking of the men whose enthusiasm, courage and resourcefulness made possible the aeronautical achievements of our Company during the half century.

It is to the memory of the pioneers, especially the particular men who are our own Bristol heroes, that this book is dedicated - to the founder, to the designers, pilots and engineers, to the skilled men in the workshops, and to so many of the rank and file who started from scratch and learnt as they went along.

Fifty years may be a short span of time measured against the whole of a nation's history, but it is long enough for a very great deal of human experience to accumulate, especially in such a swiftly changing and dramatic environment as that of aviation.

( ... ) The author's task was less exacting than that of the official historian. Yet it was far from easy. His brief was to pick out personalities, events and circumstances which appealed to his writer's eye. His choice is his own, with every facility we could offer to speed his pen, in this our salute to the pioneers.

In the years ahead our fortunes are to be combined with those of the very firms with whom Bristol pioneers were in keenest competition, but this combination of ability and strength affords us and succeding generations the prospect of another half - century of work in aviation just as exhilarating, just as demanding.

FILTON HOUSE, BRISTOL

February 1960