Wings Over Water: A Chronicle of the Flying Boats and Amphibians of the Twentieth Century

Wonderful book on the history and the things to come on flying boats!

This is a big, colorful seaplane survey; some floatplanes sneak in, but the vast majority of the illustrations are of flying boats. Printed on heavy glossy stock, the book is beautifully laid out and superbly typeset. Color is used to the fullest, with poster reproductions, new maps and artwork, and many photographs appearing in full color. B & W photos are alternately tinted in blue, green, pink and yellow, a technique I usually dislike, but its subtle use here is not unattractive. Text is authoritative and generally accurate, although there are a few errors, particularly in the WW I section. The chronological format often spreads coverage of long-lived aircraft like the Sunderland and PBY over a number of chapters, making tracing a single type somewhat time-consuming. This task is aided by a full index. An offshoot of the concentration on color is the reliance on photos of replicas and models in some situations. Unfortunately, these "substitute seaplanes" are not noted in the captions, so beware. Each of the nine chapters is introduced with a page-and-a-half color photo topped by six small insets; these six pictures are reproduced at full size elsewhere in the chapter. It appears that some poor last-minute changes by the art director have replaced the main photos of the last three chapters with one of the insets. Not only does this result in the large photos being the repeated and the loss of the original heading photos in all but inset size, but the original captions were not changed. The intended heading shots are also seen unchanged on the contents page. Each chapter also has a panel featuring a color 3-view painting and description of a seaplane representing the era addressed by the chapter. Some of these drawings are inaccurate or mis-labeled or both. The few "new" color paintings are not that good, either. Larger reproductions of some of the lovely period posters would have made better use of that space. I would have traded some of the size of the nice color maps for the posters, too. All in all, this an excellent and appealing volume which is not merely a rehash of tired old pictures. It is marred only by a few poor choices in illustrations and captioning. Recommended to all seaplane fans.