Table of Contents
EDITOR’S LETTER
AIR CORRESPONDENCE
AIRBUS INDUSTRIE: BRITAIN’S RETURN
Following his examination of the early years of Airbus in TAH28, Professor Keith Hayward FRAeS explores the political background to the UK’s return to the fold in 1978
TRIAL & TERROR
French aviation historian Jöel Mesnard describes the genesis and limited development of France’s ill-conceived and ill-fated experimental naval jet fighters of the late 1940s
THE FLYING FASHIONISTA
Ivy Hassard (née Pearce) became a household name in Australian fashion later in life, but few realise she also had a distinguished flying career in her younger years. Natasha Heap profiles this pioneering Queensland aviatrix
BRITISH-BUILT BRISTOL-ENGINED SUPERFORTS?
Clive Richards, former senior researcher at the Air Historical Branch, investigates wartime documents detailing prospective plans to build Boeing B-29s in the UK
RHODESIA’S BUSH EAGLES Pt 2
Guy Ellis concludes his two-part series on the activities of the British South Africa Police Reserve Air Wing, staffed by civilians flying armed privately-owned aircraft
BRINGING AFRICA TOGETHER Pt 2
Airline historian Maurice Wickstead rounds off his two-part history of Ethiopian Air Lines, the first international airline to be established by a wholly African state
GOODYEAR’S TERRA CAMPAIGN
In 1956 the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company used a Stinson Voyager to test its new rugged go-anywhere “Terra-Tires” for light aircraft, as Nick Stroud relates
SHARPENING THE SCIMITAR
Despite the company’s pedigree as the producer of the timeless Spitfire, Supermarine’s last fighter was “a flying brick”. Paul J. Stoddart FRAeS compares the Scimitar with its American contemporaries and asks: what could have been done — if anything — to make it world-class?
THE KING’S BREGUETS
Albert Grandolini takes a look at the “French Connection” that helped establish Siamese air power after the First World War and traces the Siamese career of the Breguet 14
HI-DE-HI FLYERS!
British holiday camp doyen Billy Butlin owned his own fleet of light aircraft and made pleasure-flying a big part of the Butlin’s holiday experience, as Grant Peerless explains
OUTSIDE EDGE
Guy Inchbald traces the history of the outboard horizontal stabiliser concept, which offers aerodynamic advantages and drawbacks, and which appears to have found its niche in the passenger-carrying spaceships of tomorrow
ARMCHAIR AVIATION
LOST & FOUND
THE CIA’S DEFECTION DECEPTION
In April 1961 the CIA hatched Project JMFURY, in which a Douglas B-26 flown by a Cuban “defector” would land in Miami to promote the idea of widespread military discord in Castro’s Cuba. It didn’t work, as Leif Hellström reveals
OFF THE BEATEN TRACK