The Battle of Winslow Sobanski Any war is made up of a series of battles – for each particular country, region, city, hamlet, hill or strongpoint… and World War 2 was no exception. But alongside the thousands of strategic and tactical fights which made it into the history books, there were millions of private battles that didn’t. On land, sea, and in the air, every … Continue reading Private War
Almost any time you watch, read or listen to interviews with WW2 fighter pilots, they give a huge amount of credit to their ground crews. And yet the media never seems to take the cue. Stories focused solely on those ground crews are rare beyond words.* However, I found the following piece in an old Air Forces Magazine (January 1944). Apart from being incredibly well … Continue reading Lonely From The Off
How to make the most of flight training A few weeks back (okay, several weeks now) I received the best kind of email – a query about flight schools from a reader contemplating starting in for her pilot’s licence. I love the idea of people wanting to become pilots. The magic, the self-discipline, the sensation and the satisfaction are all hard to beat. It’s no … Continue reading Spread your wings
When the Empire of Japan swept across the western Pacific with re-imagined mobility, the nearest safe territory was literally an ocean away from America’s arsenal of democracy. And getting from the US West Coast to Northern Australia by air would be a 12,446-kilometre-long life-or-death game of join-the-dots across the Pacific. In December 1941 only four men had ever made the flight in a land plane … Continue reading Southern Cross Airways
Birth of the bomber Long before Curtis Le May billed airborne devastation as a weapon of peace, or Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris promised Winston Churchill that the unrestricted bombing of Germany would cost Britain ‘400 to 500 aircraft…[but] cost Germany the war’, the full power of air attack had been clearly seen by its inventor and first advocate. No, not Billy Mitchell or Hugh Trenchard, but … Continue reading First strike
Another day Take a minute to think about everything you’ve done in the past eleven weeks, going right back to the start of July. Now – how long does it feel since I posted this article to mark the first day of the Battle of the Somme? The thing is, by remembering the particular carnage of July 1st, 1916 we tend to forget about all … Continue reading Somme snapshot
Thunder and Lightnings As promised, here is John Bentley’s account of his English Electric Lightning flight, from Flight International for April 23rd, 1970. In what would certainly get a well-deserved ‘#bestweekeva’ tweet today, Bentley joined 29 Squadron during their month-long deployment to RAF Akrotiri on the southern coast of Cyprus, to report on their mobile Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) capabilities. It was a textbook example … Continue reading Ride of a lifetime
The power to fly I guess I’m as guilty as anyone: I’ve written a few things about the Wright Brothers over the years and, most memorably, about the North Carolina Surfmen who helped them make their historic flights at Kill Devil Hills, NC. But, for all that, I’ve missed the man who did more than any other to make their place in history possible, and became … Continue reading May 24th every day
Over the years, the age of the giant flying boats has been romanticised into a gilded memory of glamorous, spacious and luxurious air transport that finally conquered the world’s greatest oceans. But if the era was really so fabulous, why was a gifted aircraft designer (and experienced air traveller) like Dr. Beverley Shenstone convinced that it had to end as quickly as possible? And why … Continue reading Down On The Water
Germany’s greatest fighter What if the Spitfire – that most iconic British fighter – wasn’t? British, I mean. What if it’s sighed-over elliptical wing (which, as any attentive high school student could tell you, isn’t even an ellipse) owed as much to the Germans it fought against as the English it saved? A masterpiece of aerodynamics Okay, I admit it’s a deliberately hackle-raising question… After all, the … Continue reading ‘As British as Queen Victoria’
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