The Aviation Historian Magazine Issue 23 Vorige editie

Who’d have thought that, in 2007, parts from a 1950s jet fighter would be grafted on to a helicopter emblematic of the 1960s — using pieces of boat and armoured personnel carrier to connect them — to enable that helicopter to drop bombs more familiar from the Gulf War of 1991? Yes, it really happened, and you can read the full story in this 23rd quarterly edition of The Aviation Historian. More predictably, perhaps, we mark the centenary of the Royal Air Force, by taking a look at the reasoning behind the service’s establishment in 1918 — but did the RAF’s doctrine initially head off in the wrong direction? Elsewhere in this issue we look at how Lockheed seems to have suffered from an aerodynamic blind-spot in its design of the P-38 Lightning fighter; at the short and inglorious career of the Sepecat Jaguar in Nigeria; and at how trimotors flew to the Channel Islands long before Aurigny’s recently-retired Britten-Norman Trislanders. Plus: how Garuda adopted Convair 990s; the first male pilot to fly solo from the UK to New Zealand; a Hawker Siddeley 748 sales tour of Africa; the political machinations behind the ill-fated Fairey Rotodyne; and how the futuristic-looking SNCASO Narval twin-boomed fighter fell short of expectations. All this, and much more, is illustrated with high-quality archive photographs and bespoke artwork.