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AMERICAN BEAUTY : DECEMBER 2023

P-40 KIWI WARRIOR : OCTOBER 2023

The Legend of Maj. Paul "Pappy" Gunn

Their Finest Hour

Butcher Bird Hellcat & Corsair: A test pilot recalls

Stinson’s Big-Guy L-Bird

Stalin’s Flying Hammer

LATEST

Bristol Bulldog’s First Takeoff

Ed Storo of Netarts, Oregon, spent 20 years building an as-close-to-original replica of a Bristol Bulldog. Storo’s replica wears the colors of Royal Air Force (RAF) No. 19 Squadron. Storo lifted the British fighter into the air for the first time on June 28, 2022, from Tillamook Municipal Airport near his home. “The first flight […]

Untold Story: How the USAF Won the Korean War but Couldn’t Tell Anyone

Not even the most aggressive aerial bombing in history was winning the Korean War, until one heroic Air Force mission did the impossible—ended the war—and violated every rule command leadership had created. Author Thomas McKelvey Cleaver reveals the secrets behind this daring mission. Between June 27, 1950, when the first U.S. interdiction bombing mission of […]

Web Foot Bomber – Martin’s P6M: SeaMaster or Sea Monster?

As the sun had touched the horizon, the four-man crew of the huge flying-boat started their four J-75 turbojets. Engines whining at idle, they cast off from the buoy and water-taxied out of the lagoon. Turning into the ocean breeze, the throttles were pushed forward into full afterburner and the 80-ton behemoth accelerated with a […]

The Death Rattlers – Flying and Fighting with VMF-323

Marine Fighting Squadron 323 (VMF-323) was commissioned on August 1, 1943, and was quickly brought up to combat-ready status under the leadership of young Maj. George Axtell Jr. Instilling great discipline and aggressive fighter tactics, the men of VMF-323 certainly earned their squadron’s nickname as the “Death Rattlers.” At the controls of the F4U and […]

Peter Teichman pulls in close to the cameraship
in his Mustang, painted as “Jumpin’ Jacques.” Teichman’s Mustang, his first acquisition for the
North Weald, England-based Hangar 11 Collection,
is unique as it is one of only a few Mustangs with
combat history. It still carries the field repairs from battle scars she received while flying with the 332nd Fighter Group. (Photo by John Dibbs/facebook.com/theplanepicture)

South Pacific Warrior: A rare combat Mustang

“We’d fly over the target, level, and the target would go under the wing. We’d be slowing down, and slowing down, pull up, and just do a wing over. Slightly beyond the target, pull over, and then come straight down. We had a gun sight, but [we’d] just line the target up on the seam […]

Night Hunter — the first Corsair equipped with radar

Hunched in the cockpit of an F4U-2 Corsair in the darkest, blackest night he could remember, Second Lieutenant Frank Lang peered at the 6-inch scope in the center of his instrument panel and saw nothing significant to break up the green-yellow line inscribing a circle around the dial.

Kittyhawk Jungle Rescue

Confined in a microworld of levers, switches, and instruments, Royal Australian Air Force Flight Sergeant James Denman Harvey slid his Curtiss P-40’s eight-piece canopy backwards and looked down. Hammered by tropical heat and skin slippery in perspiration, he studied the surface of a newly captured airstrip called “Tadji.” Harvey and fellow No. 78 Squadron pilots […]

The Rarest of Tigers

By the end of WW II, more than 8,000 D.H.82s had been built. Large numbers were disposed of as war surplus and were available on the civil market for as little as £50. A number were the subject of conversion schemes. The most ambitious was that carried out by Jackaroo Aircraft, Thruxton, Hampshire, England in […]

SAAB 37 Viggen – The Bird of Many Feathers

Sweden is an aeronautically unique country. After WW II, the military realized that it needed better equipment to protect the nation, so beginning in 1946, the Air Force became one of the world’s largest operators of the most state-of-the-art fighter available, the P-51 Mustang. However, while doting over what were probably the most pristine Mustangs […]

DeHavilland DH84 Dragon

Many British and Commonwealth air routes were established by airlines using de Havilland’s 6-passenger seat, twin-engine biplane, the DH84 Dragon. The Dragon’s first flight (November 1932) pre-dated the better-known DH89 Dragon Rapide (or Dominie in military service) by two years, although both aircraft made their maiden flights at the DH airfield of Stag Lane in […]

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