The Canberra was a truly remarkable part of British aviation history. Designed as a replacement for the Mosquito and first flown in 1949, the Canberra entered service in 1951 with the ability to fly twice as high as the Mosquito at speeds of over 500mph. Unsurprisingly, this attracted the attention of at least 15 foreign air forces, including the USAF, which licence built the Canberra as the B-57. Over 60 RAF squadrons operated the type and it was produced in 40 different versions. The Canberra finally retired from RAF service in 2006, a service career of 55 years, longer than almost any other aircraft type in history. A truly historic type by any measure.
For this book, we decided to concentrate on the first version, the B.2 and its variants. Essentially any airframe that you could make from a B.2 based model kit, without all the later lumps and bumps attached.
As for choosing an author, we asked our regular RAF author Andrew Thomas if he knew much about the Canberra, to which he replied, ‘well I did fly in them for a couple of tours during my RAF flying career’! So, we think for the first time in the WPA series, we have an author who actually flew the subject aircraft, which is a great way to kick off the next fifty titles.
