The Aviation Historian Magazine Issue 33 Back Issue

75 years ago, in December 1945, Lord Brabazon of Tara delivered the last of his reports based on the work of his Committee, convened in 1942 to examine the prospects for the UK’s post-war civil aviation industry. In this issue’s cover feature, Professor Keith Hayward examines the political and industrial aspects of the Brabazon Committee’s work, which led to a classic Great British story of political muddle, industrial inertia and lost opportunities. In contrast, other parts of TAH33 have a distinctly French flavour: we explore how the Dassault Mirage IV was considered to replace the cancelled TSR.2 in RAF service; the 1920s experiments by Jean de Chappedelaine in using centrifugal force for lift and propulsion; the Nieuport-Delage NiD 122C1 parasol monoplane fighter in Peruvian service; and the career of a French-trained Cambodian MiG-17 and Skyraider pilot. Elsewhere in the issue we chart the USAAF 25th Bomb Group’s use of the de Havilland Mosquito in laying screens of “chaff” to blind German radar ahead of the Eighth Air Force’s bomber streams; we explain how the USSR brought aviation to Afghanistan 60 years before its ultimately futile war there in the 1980s; and we conclude a three-part series on Italy’s forgotten airlines. All this, and more, is illustrated with high-quality archive photographs and bespoke artwork.