Flying Boats : The J-class Yachts of Aviation

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, airfields were still a rarity in most parts of the world and if you wanted to fly abroad you were wise to use an airplane that could land on water. Pan American and Imperial Airways were the pioneers of the brief but heady age of flying boats.

This book, packed and bursting with evocative watercolour paintings, brings to life the dash and glitter era of making a journey in a boat that could fly. - Here is a beautiful series of watercolour paintings of a now-obsolete mode of air transport. - Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, airfields were still a rarity in most parts of the world and if you wanted to fly abroad you were wise to use an airplane that could land on water. - The brief but heady age of flying boats was born with the two principal airlines being Pan American Airways and its British counterpart, Imperial Airways. - These two companies pioneered the business of operating passenger air services overseas. - WWII broke out which necessitated the construction of land based airfields and at the end of the war the availability of these hard runways coupled with the development of aircraft technology combined to render, sadly, the flying boats obsolete.