Home
Gordon A.A. Wilson immigrated to Canada in 1965 for an aeronautical engineering course. In 1968 he joined the Canadian Forces as a test pilot for North American Air (now Aerospace) Defense Command (NORAD). NORAD and the Soviet Nuclear Threat: Canada's Secret Electronic Air War (Dundurn, 2012) takes readers inside the top-secret world of the Air Weapons Controllers Underground Complex where military exercises took place. The book features an extensive review of the equipment used in the Amalgam Mute Exercise of May 10, 1973 along with Wilson's personal accounts, giving readers insight into how NORAD's systems were tested.
The Bristol Hercules was a 14-cylinder sleeve valve radial engine designed by Sir Roy Fedden and produced from 1939 by BAC. It powered Bristol's own Beaufighter but was more commonly used on bombers. From the 1375 hp Hercules I to the 1735 hp Hercules XVII produced late in the Second World War, the variants powered the Avro Lancaster B.II, the Handley Page Halifax, the Short Stirling, the Vickers Wellesley and the Vickers Wellington, among others. The sleeve valve engine was an efficient configuration that allowed the use of lower octane fuels for the same compression ratio. It was clever, and it worked. Gordon Wilson provides a biography of this ingenious workhorse in The Hercules: The Other Engine That Helped Win the War (Amberley, 2024), designed and modified under the pressure of wartime. Wilson has had exclusive access to the restoration of a Handley Page Halifax, which has provided picture details unavailable elsewhere.
Wilson lives near Vancouver.
BOOKS:
The Hercules: The Other Engine That Helped Win the War (Amberley, 2024) $74.50 9781398111684
Norad and the Soviet Nuclear Threat: Canada's Secret Electronic Air War (Dundurn, 2012) $28.99 978-1459704107
[BCBW 2024]
The Bristol Hercules was a 14-cylinder sleeve valve radial engine designed by Sir Roy Fedden and produced from 1939 by BAC. It powered Bristol's own Beaufighter but was more commonly used on bombers. From the 1375 hp Hercules I to the 1735 hp Hercules XVII produced late in the Second World War, the variants powered the Avro Lancaster B.II, the Handley Page Halifax, the Short Stirling, the Vickers Wellesley and the Vickers Wellington, among others. The sleeve valve engine was an efficient configuration that allowed the use of lower octane fuels for the same compression ratio. It was clever, and it worked. Gordon Wilson provides a biography of this ingenious workhorse in The Hercules: The Other Engine That Helped Win the War (Amberley, 2024), designed and modified under the pressure of wartime. Wilson has had exclusive access to the restoration of a Handley Page Halifax, which has provided picture details unavailable elsewhere.
Wilson lives near Vancouver.
BOOKS:
The Hercules: The Other Engine That Helped Win the War (Amberley, 2024) $74.50 9781398111684
Norad and the Soviet Nuclear Threat: Canada's Secret Electronic Air War (Dundurn, 2012) $28.99 978-1459704107
[BCBW 2024]
