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The piston engines that powered Second World War fighters, the men who designed them, and the secret intelligence work carried out by both Britain and Germany would determine the outcome of the first global air war.

Sleek, futuristic and deadly - the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon was born from the crucible of the air war over Vietnam and the need for cheaper, simpler and more maneuverable fighter aircraft with which to combat the many thousands of Soviet-bloc supplied aircraft sold around the world.

n 1958, a talented young musician by the name of Harry Webb adopted a new stage name - and as the saying goes, the rest is history. Cliff Richard, first with The Drifters and then backed by The Shadows, dominated the British music scene in the late 1950s and early 60s with memorable hits such as Move It, Living Doll and Summer Holiday.He was the UK¿s answer to Elvis, and led a group of artists that included the likes of Tommy Steele and Marty Wilde as they took the nation by storm with their new and exciting rock ¿n¿ roll sensation.But, while the popularity of others would be replaced by Beatlemania, Cliff was only just getting started. As time¿s moved on he''s adapted his style to softer rock and middle-of-the-road pop, and an increased focus on his faith has even seen him venture into contemporary Christian music.In an unrivalled career that has now spanned six decades, Cliff has enjoyed unprecedented chart success, came agonisingly close to a Eurovision Song Contest win and has cemented himself as one of the best-selling British performers of all time.This special picture-packed edition explores his 60 years at the top, and celebrates the life and times of a true music legend.

Helps modellers expand their skills and explore fresh techniques, from the essential basics to the intricacies of Digital Command Control, leading to the goal of the hobby - to build and operate a model railway.

During the 1950s, metal, grease, oil, leathers and attitude bucked tradition and sprouted a revolution in machine masculinity. Owning and riding a café racer was about elemental emotions, where the relationship between man and machine was visceral, born out of intuition and a unique vision that was thoughtful, intuitive and insightful. It was at the dawn of rock `n¿ roll, when café racers grew to become a symbol of the lifestyle, and launched perhaps the most influential motorcycle movement the world has ever seen. Today, thanks to the retro boom, shed mechanics and professional engineers the world over act as conduits for yet further experimentation and aesthetic innovation. And just like before, the world is sitting up and taking notice. Café Racer International provides a fresh canvas for bikers, builders and bike customisers that make up the rich tapestry that is the epitome of casual coolness.

oung scooter owners of the 1960s had a seemingly insatiable appetite for speed and power. Shops appeared offering performance tuning services for the first time and a new era of scootering dawned. The scene went underground in the 1970s but the release of Quadrophenia inspired a new wave of devotees going into the 1980s. The introduction of the TS1 cylinder kit for the Lambretta and the T5 Vespa by Piaggio took the tuning scene in a new direction. Now the pure Lambretta and Vespa street racer came to the forefront. Owners blew huge budgets and their stunning creations took these machines to a new level. Today the Lambretta and Vespa Street racer scene continues to thrive. Author Stuart Owen traces the development of Lambretta and Vespa tuning down the decades using dozens of rare period images and highlighting every significant technological milestone along the way.

The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is the undisputed king of fighter aircraft, scoring around 105 kills for zero losses in air-to-air combat. Designed as a pure air superiority machine, the Eagle has since become one of the best fighter-bombers in its class: the Strike Eagle.   Since it entered service in 1976, around 1600 F-15s have been built for six air forces around the world. Fast and agile, the Eagle has been the defensive tip of the spear for the Free World. The Israelis blooded the Eagle in the Middle East when they first took delivery in 1979. Since then both fighter and strike versions have been in almost constant action, through Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom and beyond in the war against terror

Brian Sharpe tells the story of the legendary steam locomotive.

Includes a selection of projects for economical and easy-to tackle conversions of ready-to-run models to transform them into unavailable loco classes and variants.

The start of Space Shuttle operations in 1981 marked a new era in spaceflight - with the five orbiters launching numerous satellites, interplanetary probes and the Hubble Space Telescope. But Shuttle was only partially reusable, its external fuel tank being expendable and its solid rocket boosters having to be recovered from the ocean and refurbished. Putting a satellite into orbit using a rocket was even more wasteful - with boosters such as Ariane being one-shot only. The costs were literally astronomical. So when rocket scientist Alan Bond met propulsion and systems specialist Bob Parkinson at the British Interplanetary Society in 1982 during a lecture on Ariane 5, they got to talking about alternatives to the expendable rocket and concluded that the solution was... an aerospaceplane. The concept was deceptively simple - a vehicle able to take off from a conventional runway, fly up into space, complete its mission, then fly back down and land. Bond and Parkinson believed it could be done and HOTOL - HOrizontal Take-Off and Landing - was born. By 1985 both British Aerospace and Rolls-Royce were backing the project. A television news broadcast in 1987 made HOTOL famous overnight, with the whole nation now aware of its existence. The Government agreed to provide yet more financial backing and the work ramped up into high gear, with some of Britain's best engineers engaged in making this remarkable vehicle a reality. Just a year later, Minister of State of Trade and Industry Kenneth Clarke, under pressure from Margaret Thatcher, withdrew funding - signalling the beginning of the end of HOTOL. Decades later, Elon Musk and SpaceX would finally corner the market in reusable space transportation with the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, putting an end to any hope of a HOTOL revival. HOTOL: Spaceplane of the Future by Dan Sharp covers the full story of HOTOL's development in detail from beginning to end drawing on both the BAE Systems archive and the personal archives of the project's creators. It includes hundreds of previously unseen diagrams and illustrations, ranging from full colour brochures and publicity material - both used and unused - to schematics of all of HOTOL's numerous configurations.

On the railways, Dr Richard Beeching was appointed Chairman of the British Transport Commission - a decision that was to have considerable influence on the future of the network. The East Coast Main Line, for so long the domain of the 'A3s' and 'A4s' on express passenger services, saw the start of the diesel take-over.

Updated to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, D-Day: Operation Overlord and the Battle for Normandy, tells the full story of the invasion, with detailed accounts of each of the five landing zones on June 6, 1944, the airborne assault and the Normandy campaign that followed. It was the most ambitious military operation in history - the invasion of Nazi-occupied France by sea. A fleet larger than any ever seen before was assembled and launched under conditions of utmost secrecy to catch the defenders of Adolf Hitler's formidable Atlantic Wall by surprise.At H-Hour on D-Day, British, American and Canadian soldiers landed on beaches whose codenames have since become a byword for heroism - Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah. Men waded ashore into a hail of machine gun fire and fought their way through a tangle of concrete bunkers and armoured emplacements. More ferocious combat followed as fanatical Waffen-SS divisions armed with terrifying new weapons such as the King Tiger tank battled to the death to contain the Allied advance.D-Day: Operation Overlord and the Battle for Normandy tells the story of the most important battle of the Second World War and remembers the men whose extraordinary courage and sacrifice brought about the liberation of Europe and put an end to Hitler's tyranny.

It has been 80 years since the largest seaborne invasion in military history but D-Day could not have happened without the Royal Air Force. When the dramatic events of June 6, 1944, are retold the courage of British and Commonwealth pilots and aircrew is seldom mentioned - yet the dangerous missions they flew were vital to Operation Overlord's success. To mark the 80th anniversary of arguably the war's most crucial turning point, the author recounts stories of quiet bravery and individual heroism high above the blood-soaked beaches and landing grounds of France, illustrated through a combination of rare period photographs and beautiful aviation art. D-Day RAF: The RAF's Part in the Great Invasion presents the very human face of the air force''s role in the Normandy landings, and looks in detail at the types flown in support of them, from Supermarine Spitfire fighters and Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers to A-20 Boston and Avro Lancaster bombers. D-Day RAF: The RAF's Part in the Great Invasion written by retired Squadron Leader and former Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Officer Commanding Clive Rowley.

Locomotive No 32 Tamerline became the first steam locomotive to be completed at Crewe Works on 10 March 1843. One hundred and fifteen years later BR 9F No 92250 became the 7,331st steam locomotive to be built at the Cheshire works, when completed in December 1958. This publication is a tribute to the thousands of people employed there during the steam locomotive building era.In 1913 The Railway Magazine proudly described Crewe as "the most famous railway works in the world". Indeed, railways throughout the world benefited from adopting 'best Crewe practice'. Many who worked at Crewe in its heyday, first under the London & North Western Railway and later the London Midland & Scottish Railway, held the firm belief that the works was the 'beating heart' of the Cheshire town.Back in those days you would be hard put to find a local family without some kind of connection to that vast engineering enterprise. In earlier times the works not only provided the steadily growing town with employment, but furthermore supplied the town with both gas and domestic water. For example, the consumption of the gas produced at the works in the 1940s was assessed as 30% to the works, 20% to Rolls-Royce and 50% to the town. Those statistics are a great example of the many close ties that existed between the works and the town.After the post-war Transport Act, steam locomotive construction and maintenance continued under the newly created company British Railways. From 1948 under Nationalisation in addition to locomotive building, BR Crewe Works was responsible for the maintenance of some 2,779 steam locomotives. However, even as the Standard Locomotive building programme got underway plans for a future railway system without steam traction were being drawn up.The timeline of this publication highlights those steam locomotive classes which were listed as being built by Crewe Works (in any time period) but importantly included in the BR January 1948 stock list. It also includes BR Standard class locomotives built at Crewe post 1951. Steam traction did return to the works, albeit in only a token manner during the occasion of the September 2005 Great Gathering.Crewe Works - A Celebration of Steam by Keith Langston is not intended to be a source of detailed steam engineering practices, but is a comprehensively illustrated record of steam locomotive building and maintenance at Crewe Works. Fortunately, important engineering work was still carried out at Crewe Works in 2023. Given the reduced size of the works, and reduction in numbers employed, it would not be unfair to say that the once 'beating heart' of the town is at least a 'discernible pulse'.

Opened in 1960 to 'preserve the puffer for posterity', a trip along the Bluebell Line is one of the most relaxing and enjoyable journeys one could wish for. In the spring bluebells, from which the line takes its name, carpet the many woods adjoining the line while during the summer months special events attract railway enthusiasts from far and wide. The stunning autumn tints are a joy to behold while the highlight of the winter period is the annual visit by Father Christmas which brings such joy to the children. The Bluebell is truly a line for all seasons.

Stately Trains was born out of one man's passion for vintage carriages. Stephen Middleton was brought up in a railway family. His father, grandfather and maternal grandfather all worked for railway companies from pre-grouping through to the British Railways era after nationalisation. His father had a First Class pass for rail travel, thus it is no surprise that Middleton junior experienced regular luxury travel on East Coast Pullmans between Yorkshire and London. At the age of five he longed to be a steward working on the Pullman cars. Fate took him in a different direction but that yearning did not leave him and in 1992, after seeing an advertisement in Steam Railway magazine, his enthusiasm for railway carriages was rekindled. The advertisement drew his attention to an unrestored Great Eastern Railway carriage (No.14) that coincidentally had been used as the district engineer's saloon at Ipswich when his father had started work on the railway there. He made a successful bid and embarked on a restoration journey that was to create a collection of historically significant pre-1914 luxury carriages.These further restorations have included a first class saloon built for the Great North of Scotland Railway in 1894 and three directors saloons, one built for the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway in 1906, one for the London & North Western Railway in 1913 and one for the Great Eastern Railway that dates from 1911. In addition to the Great Eastern Railway's coach (No.14) referred to previously, a family saloon built for the GER (1897) and believed to have been used by Queen Victoria's granddaughter Princess Alice has also been acquired and brought back into use.That royal connection has been reinforced by what is considered to be the 'jewel in the crown' of the collection in the form of a London & South Western Railway carriage that was constructed specifically for Queen Victoria's royal train in 1885 and later converted for her personal use during her golden jubilee celebrations in 1887. Still to be restored are another GER family saloon dating from 1877 that was later to be converted for the use of Edward, Prince of Wales and a coach that, when completed, will be the oldest operational Pullman carriage in the world. In the midst of gathering this stock together, Stephen has also restored an 0-6-0 saddle tank, Illingworth, that was built in 1916 and has, during its long career, helped the war effort in both the First and Second World Wars. As a 'sideline', Stephen and many volunteers have been involved in the purchase and setting up of a charitable trust and subsequent restoration of the 1903 North Eastern Railcar. This is a true pioneer being the first railcar in the world to use internal combustion to drive a generator which in turn powered electric traction motors. Each piece in the collection has had a fascinating history from its construction through its working life and on into preservation. Along the way Stephen has collected many photographs and much information/memorabilia to complete their stories and these form the basis for this book.

There are many myths surrounding the development of the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter. Its unparalleled performance is beyond doubt; easily able to outpace its opponents and possessing the firepower to shred them in seconds.