The Aviation Historian Magazine Issue 45 Back Issue

The advantages — and challenges — of standing still while airborne (“an unnatural act”) became very clear to USAF pilot Colonel John W. Zink when he changed his day-job from flying high and fast in the mighty F-4 Phantom to operating from a hole in the woods in the much smaller Harrier GR.3 during his officer exchange posting to the RAF’s No 1 (F) Sqn. His first-hand recollections form TAH45’s cover story. Meanwhile British military aviation of an earlier age owed much to the Vickers Mk I 0·303in machine-gun, which equipped the RAF’s fighters from the First World War through to the beginning of the Second. In our series on significant UK aerial weapons, technical illustrator Ian Bott and armaments historian Mark Russell turn their attention to the details and development of this ubiquitous firearm. Also in this issue: the Battle of the Bismarck Sea; 1990s plans to use airships as surveillance platforms in the troubled areas of Northern Ireland; the mystery of a German widow who fell from an airborne Dornier airliner in 1930; a series of mid-1950s North American advanced military jet interceptor projects; dive-bombing exercises in the Hawker Sea Hawk; and much more.