Featured image: Library of Congress P&P, LC-USW36-24 The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was essentially a propaganda agency, promulgated by Franklin D Roosevelt on June 13th, 1942 as a unification of several domestic information agencies. Many Americans were bewildered by their rapid progression from Great Depression, to Arsenal of Democracy, to co-belligerent in a global conflict. So Roosevelt charged the OWI with using … Continue reading Works of Art
John Moffat You may not have heard of John (‘Jock’) William Charlton Moffat. Not enough people have. On May 26th, 1941, Moffat and his crew of Fairey Swordfish 5C, L9726, flying off HMS Ark Royal in appalling weather, launched the torpedo that crippled the mighty Nazi battleship Bismarck. It was already Britain’s last roll of the dice against Bismarck, and arguably the most pivotal single act … Continue reading That pilot
Feature image: A British Airways Speedbird departs LHR for a glorious sky. (Simon Allardice | flickr.com CC BY 2.0) Skyfaring. A Journey with a Pilot. by Mark Vanhoenacker Published by Chatto & Windus, London, 2015 ISBN 10: 0701188669 / ISBN 13: 978-0701188665 They are all too rare – those timeless books that not only describe flight perfectly, but also convey all the beauty, poetry, wonder … Continue reading Skyfaring
Feature image courtesy of Zoggavia.com Every airplane has a life story. I couldn’t possibly tell them all, but I can trace the star of my Connie Crossing article, G-AHEL Bangor II, thanks largely to the remarkable research and image collecting of Paul Zogg at zoggavia.com A new world order G-AHEL started life on Lockheed’s Burbank production line in 1944, as just the 17th C-69 laid … Continue reading Triple Tale
After walking around the F-111C in my last post (and sorry for the delay until this one, by the way), I thought it would be fitting to round out the F-111 story with some images from the other end of its life cycle. So, Pig fans – or, more accurately, Aardvark Admirers – enjoy. Each image opens to about 2000px on its long side, and such detail as I could … Continue reading Big Beginnings
While it’s easy to be unkind about the big, heavy and expensive F-111 Aardvark, it was definitely a multi-tonne Mach 2 marvel for its time. So as a special treat, here’s a bit of a walk-around of the Royal Australian Air Force’s A8-134, now thoroughly ‘de-fanged’ and permanently retired. #134 (cn D1-10) is a General Dynamics F-111C on long term loan from the RAAF to the … Continue reading Big Pig
Featured image by Tijl Vercaemer CC BY 2.0 In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. Lt.Col. John McCrae MD, Canadian Expeditionary Force April 25th is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand – a day of commemoration centred on the … Continue reading Fallen
People are still moved by the loss of VH-UMF ‘Southern Cloud’ in 1931 – with all eight souls aboard – and especially the agonising 27-year wait to discover their fate. Following my March 21st article on the crash, airscape was contacted by Ken Watson who is affiliated with Australia’s Civil Aviation Historical Society and Airways Museum at Essendon, Victoria. As the repository of our civil airways and … Continue reading Missing …reprise
The Curtiss Jenny hardly needs an introduction. Designed for Glenn Curtiss by Benjamin Thomas, who had worked at Sopwith Aviation, the original JN1 was a heavy, underwhelming performer. The subsequent JN2 and JN3 improvements weren’t much better. However, Curtiss hit gold with the JN4. Mild-mannered, manoeuvrable and robust, the definitive JN-4D variant made up the bulk of a 6,813 airframe production run. An estimated 95% of … Continue reading Jenny lessons
My friends at Apron6 have shared these great Russian aviation posters. For all its flaws, communism certainly spurs its graphic artists to achieve more… Now, can you help by translating the headlines for us? Continue reading Aviation related Soviet propaganda
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