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DESERT OMBAT - OCTOBER 2022

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

WW II Vet Takes to the Air in SBD Dive Bomber

WW II veteran Dick Miralles slid into the gunner’s seat of the SBD Dauntless Dive Bomber almost as easily as he did 80 years ago in the South Pacific. Miralles, 98, was reliving his wartime experience in a restored SBD operated by CAF Airbase Georgia in Peachtree City. Miralles flew in the rear, or gunner, […]

Budd Davisson to join the EAA Homebuilders Hall of Fame

Budd Davisson of Phoenix, Arizona, contributing editor for Flight Journal and known worldwide for his extensive writings on homebuilt aircraft, aerobatic flight, and aviation safety, will be honored by the Experimental Aircraft Association on November 10 with his induction to the EAA Homebuilders Hall of Fame. Davisson is one of five individuals to be honored […]

Defender of the Reich: WW II as seen by a Luftwaffe Ace

Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring was in rare form, his eyes full of fire as he faced one of the better known of Germany’s aces, Oberst Walther Dahl. “Göring’s reply astonished even me,” Dahl remembered. “In the presence of pilots with heads, arms and legs in plaster, he yelled: ‘You cowards! Now I know why your Geschwader […]

What They Wore

The P-47 Thunderbolt pilot of 1945 wore and carried lots of stuff, and little of it gave meaning to the military term “uniform.” At Metz, France, in January 1945, the group and squadron commanders of the “Hell Hawks” 365th Fighter Group posed in their gear in front of a wrecked Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf 190. The men […]

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 […]

High-Time Hog Driver

Inside the cockpit with Lt. Col. John Marks, the Air Force’s most experienced A-10 pilot Ten thousand feet above an area near the city of Ghazni in southeastern Afghanistan, Lt. Col. John Marks—call sign “Karl”—adjusted the zoom for the infrared sensor in the Litening pod on his right wing. Peering at the infrared image on […]

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 […]

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 […]

“Test Pilot: An Extraordinary Career Testing Civil Aircraft”

Having flown an astonishing 400 different aircraft, as a licensed Category 1 test pilot and flight test instructor for both airplanes and helicopters, Chris Taylor is arguably one of the best qualified and widely experienced test pilots working today anywhere in the world. After obtaining his private pilot’s license at the age of just 17, […]

Breitling Aerospace Red Arrows Special Edition

News from Breitling on their Red Arrows timepiece: “We are pleased to announce our latest launch in collaboration with the Royal Air Force, the Breitling Aerospace Red Arrows Special Edition. Our historical partnership with the Royal Air Force dates from the 1930s, and today the pilots wear Breitling Chronographs built to ensure accuracy and reliability […]

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