The Aviation Historian Magazine Issue 18 Back Issue

Many aviation enthusiasts — plus book- and cinema-lovers worldwide — admire novelist Joseph Heller’s 1961 masterpiece Catch-22. But how many realise that it was based directly on the writer’s own vivid experiences as a 60-mission USAAF bombardier on B-25s in the Mediterranean during World War Two? In the cover story of this 18th quarterly issue of The Aviation Historian we profile Heller’s wartime career and gain an insight into the inspiration for characters including General Dreedle, Snowden the tragic gunner and morally-flexible quartermaster Milo Minderbinder. Conflicts of other kinds loom elsewhere in this issue — in an analysis of BOAC’s troubled procurement of the Vickers VC10, in which the elegant airliner was buffeted from all sides by the different agendas of the airline, the aircraft industry and Britain’s politicians; in the story of the USA’s National Airlines and its combative boss, Ted Baker; and in our continuing history of the Luftwaffe’s Erprobungskommando 25, which tested ever more bizarre anti-bomber weapons during World War Two. This instalment examines artificial air squalls, cable-bombs and “fire-clouds”. All these stories and more — including General Curtis LeMay’s KC-135 VIP transport, Dassault Mirages in Zaïre, and a high-society lightplane weekend at a Belgian château in 1930 — are illustrated with high-quality archive photographs and bespoke artwork.