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140rainforest. Since, with only a little additional effort, the content of thegeneralised survey could be presented in a form that would be applicableto the whole series, it could have been published as a separate volume,which, apart from saving a few trees, would have been a more economicand user (customer) friendly approach. Like the inadequate index, thissuggests a lack of forethought on the part of the publishers at theplanning stage.Despite these observations, this book is an admirable effort. Of Vol 1,I said that it %u2018contains many tantalising insights into long forgottenaspects of aviation and I found it very rewarding to browse through%u2019; thatcomment is equally applicable to Vol 2.CGJThe Last of the Hunters by Martin W Bowman. Sutton; 2002. %u00a325.Martin Bowman%u2019s book Last of the Hunters contains a splendidcollection of previously unpublished photographs of this wonderfulaeroplane, most of them taken by the men who flew them in their prime(the men and the machines that is!) and those who maintained them. IanCadwallader%u2019s quotation on the back cover, %u2018The Hunter was not only thebest looking fighter of its time but it was a magnificent aeroplane to fly%u2019,may be subjective but the fighter pilot is a subjective animal. Despite theviews of Mike Haggerty on page 28 who states, %u2018Whatever we were tofly in future years nothing would displace the Sabre as number one inour affection%u2019, the Hunter stands head and shoulders above other types inthe souls of the men who flew them with the RAF and other Services.The Hunter was graceful, elegant and exhilarating to fly and for those ofus who were fortunate to fly her in her prime, she was the Queen of theSkies, views endorsed by Neville Duke, Bill Bedford and DuncanSimpson who were, in their time, the Chief Test Pilots at Hawkers.Although the last service Hunter was retired fifty years after the firstflight of the prototype P.1067, its life in the front line of the RAF wasbrief, as technology rapidly overtook the limited transonic performanceof its generation. It served only eight years as an air defence fighter,although more than thirty squadrons and several other units operated theaircraft. This compared with twenty-four years for the Phantom andtwenty-nine for the Lightning. The air defence role overlapped withanother eleven years as a ground attack and reconnaissance variantcompared to thirty years plus for the Jaguar. It is interesting to reflect