Description
Renowned for its in-depth articles from 250 specialist authors worldwide, The Aviation Historian is a quarterly journal that is valued and respected for its superb high-quality archive photography and specially-commissioned drawings, profiles and information graphics. Conceived and produced by a four-person team who between them have clocked up 84 years’ experience on aviation-history magazines, the journal combines traditional attention-to-detail with a modern tone.
Covering military and civil aviation from before the Wright Brothers to the dawn of spaceflight, this compact-format square-spined quarterly journal is designed to take its place alongside the most treasured books on your shelves. Making new discoveries in your favorite field of interest is always exciting, whether you’re a history aficionado, a modeler on the hunt for new projects, or both.
The Aviation Historian provides great reading and first-class reference material to feed your passion. It truly is “aviation history for connoisseurs."
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Table of Contents
EDITOR’S LETTER
AIR CORRESPONDENCE
THE SINGAPORE EXPRESS
In 1935 Qantas Empire Airways opened Australia’s first international passenger route, between Brisbane and Singapore, with the new de Havilland D.H.86. David Crotty describes the troubled birth of the QEA Express service
TO AFRICA IN A BARREL
Swedish aviation historian Leif Hellström provides a full account of the operations undertaken by a cadre of Saab J 29 “Flying Barrels” sent by Sweden to support United Nations forces during the Congo Crisis in the early 1960s
ANJOS UM CINCO!
José Matos explains how Portuguese Air Force Hawker Hurricanes came to be used in the film Angels One Five, and details the career of the ageing fighter in Portugal 44 ECHOES FROM DAWN SKIES: AIR-ITIS In the final instalment of our eight-part series based on British pioneer F.W. Merriam’s long-lost manuscript of memories from his contemporaries, Merriam himself revisits his early years as one of Britain’s first flying instructors
NINETY SECONDS OVER TOBRUK
75 years after the death of Italo Balbo, Italy’s most famous airman, Gregory Alegi tells the full story of the tragic events surrounding the demise of one of Mussolini’s closest allies
THE SOUTH BANK SHOW
Our series based on newly-discovered rolls of film taken by aviation journalist John Stroud continues with a visit to London’s South Bank to watch BEA’s whirlybirds at work
AN EYE FOR DETAIL: RIDING THE STORM
Juanita Franzi’s series on lesser-known airframes and their markings continues with a look at a rare civilian Martin B-57A used by the US Weather Bureau as a hurricane-hunter
A HARD RAIN
Digging deep into the archives, Edward M. Young takes a detailed look at the US Navy’s operations over the Central Pacific archipelago of Truk in February 1944, and explains why it was a breakthrough in naval aerial warfare
THE MIRACLE OF FLIGHT 843
50 years ago the superb airmanship of a Pan Am pilot and his crew averted a major catastrophe when the No 4 engine of their Boeing 707 exploded and tore away half the starboard wing after take-off, as Melvyn Hiscock relates
RUM PUNCH
Nick Stroud chronicles the development of one of France’s most unusual pre-war military types — the bizarre twinengined twin-finned SNCASE SE.100 fighter-bomber
THE LIGHT BRIGADE
Famous as a lighting and electronics company, Philips was one of the first organisations to understand the advantages of a corporate aircraft fleet, as Tom Singfield explains
ARMCHAIR AVIATION
LOST & FOUND
RUSSIA’S REAL FLYING TANKS
Vladimir Kotelnikov reveals previously unpublished details of the Soviet Union’s 1930s attempts to develop genuine “flying tanks” — armoured tracked vehicles with wings
OFF THE BEATEN TRACK