The Aviation Historian Magazine Issue 30 Edizione posteriore

Who’d have thought an individual fast military jet could remain in service for more than 70 years? Yet that is exactly what the oldest of Iran’s McDonnell Douglas F-4D Phantoms is on course to do: delivered in 1968, it has been refurbished and updated, and with further life-extension programmes it is expected to keep flying until 2040! The full story of Iran’s “Diesel Phantoms” is told in a major ten-page feature in this 30th quarterly issue of The Aviation Historian. Other features explore the demise of the mighty Handley Page company 50 years ago; how the Soviet Air Force used the otherwise-unloved Bell P-39 Airacobra to great effect during World War Two; the strange “rotating wing” device invented by France’s Antoine Filippi in 1906; and how Qantas Empire Airways’ flying-boat service was utilised to spy on Japanese encroachment on Portuguese Timor. There’s more: how the USAAF used Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses to find and disable German radar stations in the Mediterranean theatre; the little-known Armstrong Whitworth AW.58 supersonic project, an early rival to what became the English Electric Lightning; Ryan B.1 Broughams in Australia, the Tupolev Tu-104A jetliner’s career in Czechoslovakian service, and Sweden’s use of the de Havilland Venom. All this is illustrated with high-quality archive photographs and bespoke artwork.