‘Don’t change anything’ You’ll hear this story a lot at the start of every March – on the 5th of the month, 1936, Vickers’ Chief Test Pilot ‘Mutt’ Summers took the prototype Supermarine Spitfire, K5054, for its first flight. On landing, he’s widely reported to have said ‘Don’t change anything’ – or words to that effect. There’s been a lot of speculation about this brusque … Continue reading The man inside K5054
“She went out of there like a fighter jet.” Of all the great things that have been said about Boeing’s mighty 747, that simple observation probably says more for the people who designed, built and maintained the Queen of the Skies than any other. Specifically, it was made by a Mr. Robert Craig Butler about the way 747-122, tail number N4713U, roared out of Honolulu for … Continue reading UAL 811: The untold story
A few weeks back, the hugely admirable John Mollison posted a new Old Guys & Their Airplanes clip to accompany his finished illustration of F/L John Wilkinson’s Spitfire Mk.XIV. Perhaps I should have that the other way around… Anyway, John’s post, clip and artwork reminded me that I had a pilot’s review of the XIV in my collection, and it seemed appropriate to share it. Unlike … Continue reading Flying the Fourteen
Back in May, I published ‘Death of an Airliner’ – the, oh, let’s call it ‘surprising’ post-accident life of Boeing 747-122 msn #19875/89 which, as United Airlines Flight UAL 811, suffered an explosive decompression out of Honolulu in February 1989. You may recall that the aircraft was safely recovered to HNL through the skill of Captain David Cronin and his crew. Despite substantial damage, she was … Continue reading Remembering United N4713U
A century ago, World War One changed the course of history. Total, global, industrial and mechanical, it was a new kind of conflict that redrew maps, destroyed families – from royal to rural, helped emancipate women, and hand-propped the infant aviation industry. For the first time in history, young men would wheel simple but surprisingly advanced machines high above the mud-bound stalemate of artillery and trench sieges. And … Continue reading Southern Knights
Just recently, Editor Jeb Burnside published an article in the August 2016 issue Aviation Safety magazine that set me thinking. Here’s how it started: If you know a better way to teach and explain critical analysis of the dangers a proposed flight might pose, we’re all ears. Well, okay, seeing as you asked… But first, a little of the backstory. PAVE and I’M SAFE The article … Continue reading I’M SAFE
I thought I’d add a little background info for the story of the Colditz Glider, as covered in my Flight From Colditz book review. I actually wrote this summary for the review, but it just didn’t fit. So here it is. . . Oflag IV-C The basic story of Colditz is fairly well known: In the second half of 1940, the Germans decided it would … Continue reading Behind the walls
I have a thing for maps. (I might have mentioned this once or twice before…) So finding a collection of old air navigation maps on the internet is a serious delight – one I’m not about to keep for myself. The collection covers about 70 maps from the Connecticut State Library at Hartford, and is an incomplete set of ‘United States Air Navigation Maps (Experimental)’ from … Continue reading Way to go
With the first-ever Boeing 727 (727-22, serial N7001U, c/n 18293/1) making its last-ever flight from restoration at Paine Field to a permanent home at the Museum of Flight, now seems like a fitting time to look back at one of the coolest airliners ever built. I recently read a presentation called Web Design: The First 100 Years, which proposed that most of what we … Continue reading 727 departures
Now, I dislike greedy, counter-productive litigation as much as the next person (especially if the next person happens to be X-Plane’s Austin Meyer), and I’ve always been somewhat troubled by the Wright Brothers’ aggressive patent actions around “their invention” of the aileron. So I was very intrigued to find the following article in the November 4th, 1911 issue of Flight magazine. . . … Continue reading Roll models
airscape Magazine 