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
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
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
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
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
In Heavy Going, Part One I shared a British pilot’s impressions of flying the RAF’s “American heavies” during World War Two. However it’s never easy to understand which B-17 and B-24 models the British used when. They didn’t simply follow the American alphabetical system, and the Mark numbers they did use were largely assigned in the order that the purchase agreements crossed some overworked Whitehall clerk’s desk. Still, an outline of … Continue reading Heavy going (Pt.2)
A while back, I shared Indicator’s impressions of flying the De Havilland Mosquito – and promised to bring you more from that Flight magazine series. Time to make good on the offer… So, following our recent jaunt across America in four Fairey Swordfish, it seems most relevant to share a quick sketch of the venerable ‘Stringbag’. Time off for good behaviour One of the more pleasant wartime holidays from … Continue reading Time off for good behaviour
As so often happens, I was prepping a post on one topic when I spotted something completely different. In this case, a short but poignant article from the October 18th, 1945 issue of Flight magazine… Missing Airmen One of the biggest jobs now facing the Royal Air Force is the effort to trace missing airmen. Since the beginning of the war in Europe there have … Continue reading Without a trace
airscape Magazine 