Excellent book covering the origin, development, production and use of the Barracuda. In the first few pages the author describes the environment the Barracuda was developed in. Frankly, I don't believe he goes far enough.
If a mediocre aircraft ever deserved to be examined from a complete perspective of the factors that influenced its development and use, the Barracuda is it.
Here are some examples to contrast the British and American production scale of WWII along with some factors somewhat unique to the British;
1. Excess production capacity, the Brewster Buccaneer failed,the SB2C was almost a failure. The USN had the TBF/TBM and was building a factory for the Vought TBY. That's four programs where metal was cut and three programs that reached production! What excess capacity did the British have?
2. The Wichita B-29 program had more engineers working at that one, single plant than England had engineers working in the entire industry.
3. The aircraft of the RN were controlled by the RAF almost until the last moments before WWII, austere budgets, a customer that was reluctant to develop new technology aircraft, obsolete specifications, etc. all conspired to leave the RN bereft of any truly competitive and state of the art aircraft literally until the introduction of the Hawker Sea Fury. Consider the 82% increase in HP over the life of the Barracuda airframe compared to only a 38% increase in empty weight, All of that HP resulted in only a 14% increase in useful load.
(The Barracuda also was competing for better engines, all of which went to higher priority programs. - Good examples in the US would include cancellation of the Boeing PBB-1 and the Beech XA-38 Grizzly to ensure availability of the R3350 for those B-29's being built in Wichita.)
The exigencies of war combined with a lack of engines and manpower conspired with insipid customer design requirements consigned this aircraft to mediocrity. The fact the RN got the mileage out it that they did is a real tribute to the men that flew, maintained and supported it.
In fact, I will go further and say that in my opinion the Barracuda, Sea Fury, possibly the Wyvern and the Blackburn Buccaneer were the only effective aircraft developed by the Royal Navy after 1935. The RN can't even take credit for the Harrier as that was originally operated by the RAF.

The book itself? My only criticisms cover the chapter on technical descriptions, there is no description of the hydraulic system and the other descriptions are rather brief. I will say the book is well illustrated with excellent if low-res quality photographs. A brief perusal of these photographs reveals how the Barracuda appeared to be massively overbuilt.
Operational use gets very good coverage with good coverage of the attack on the Tirpitz.
Post war use gets some good coverage and the chapter on flying the aircraft appears to be pretty well balanced. There is no index, but there are footnotes which appear to be adequate. Modelers will get some limited use from this book. However, I do not recommend purchase if it is used strictly for modeling details.
Highly recommended for those interested in RN Aircraft, British WWII aircraft development and production and RN squadron histories. ( )