The years between the wars changed Clydeside aviation from emergency wartime manufacture into a much wider story of clubs, airlines, squadrons, airfields and new forms of aircraft. Clydeside Aviation Volume Two: The Inter-War Years covers 1919 to 1939 in a 294-page illustrated study. It is the volume to choose when your question is how Glasgow and the Clyde moved from the First World War aircraft economy into civil flying, reserve squadrons, helicopter experiments and renewed production before 1939.
Renfrew and civil flying on the Clyde
Renfrew is one of the book's main threads. It follows the Scottish Flying Club and the regional airline activity associated with Scottish Motor Traction, Northern Scottish and Railway Air Services. That makes the volume useful for readers who are interested in the practical beginnings of Scottish air travel, not only in military aircraft or famous manufacturers.
The inter-war period is often described through national airlines and London airports. This study keeps the local infrastructure visible: where aircraft operated, who organised flying and how the Clyde's industrial and transport networks met aviation. For a family historian, local historian or aviation reader, that local scale is often the difference between a passing mention and a usable account.
602 Squadron and the reserve air force
The book also follows 602 Squadron from the DH9A through the Hawker Hector and Gauntlet to the Spitfire on the eve of war. It includes the wider Abbotsinch picture, with 269, 32 and 21 Squadrons, and the RAF Volunteer Reserve. This gives a reader a route into the people and aircraft that made a Scottish airfield part of national defence before the Second World War.
Choose this volume if you want the sequence rather than one aircraft profile. The changing types show the pace of inter-war re-equipment, while the squadron and airfield chapters connect technical development to local service and training. Readers looking first for the wartime origins should start with Clydeside Aviation Volume One: The Great War, then continue here for the next twenty years.
Weir, Cierva and early helicopters
One of the most distinctive sections concerns the work of Weir and Cierva. The catalogue records early British helicopter flights and illustrates the Weir W5, flown in Glasgow in 1938. This is a useful corrective to the idea that Scottish aviation history was only about fixed-wing aircraft or shipbuilding. It shows engineers on the Clyde working with an emerging form of flight while the commercial and military aviation worlds were changing around them.
The book's more than 300 photographs are part of its value to readers who need to identify aircraft, sites and people. Copyright restrictions mean those images are not reproduced online, so the printed volume is the place to consult the complete visual record.
1939 and the return of aircraft production
The closing years bring aviation back into the industrial world of the Clyde. The book covers new 1939 production at Dumbarton, including the Blackburn Botha and Shark. This links the airline and squadron chapters to the renewed demands of war. It also makes the book a natural companion to Beardmore Aviation, which examines the earlier aviation work of another major Scottish industrial firm.
Read Clydeside Volume Two on its own for the inter-war period. Add Beardmore Aviation when the factory, engine, airship and carrier connection is your main interest. The books take different routes through the same regional history, so they form a useful pair rather than competing introductions.
Choose the book for the question
Choose Clydeside Aviation Volume Two for Renfrew, regional airlines, 602 Squadron, Abbotsinch, Weir helicopter work and the return of production in 1939. Begin with Volume One if you need the Great War foundations first. Or compare both in the Scottish Aviation History collection before deciding which part of the story belongs on your shelf.