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Tall Tails & Fancy Noses - The KC-135 Stratotanker in USAF Service - By Tom Ross
Backs to the Bight - The Battle of the Bay of Biscay - By Dr Alfred Price
Civil Air Patrol - Part 1. Origins: The Costal Patrol is Formed
Stand into Danger - The Gloster Meteor in Korea By Leonid Krylov and Yuriy Tepsurkaev - By Steve Palmer
The Rise & Fall of the Zimbabwean Air Force - The fate of the Zimbabwean Air Force mirrors the tragedy that has befallen the country as a whole - By Anthony Tucker-Jones
Cruzex V - For the fifth time Latin America's biggest military exercise took place in the skies over North Eastern Brazil. - By Robin Polderman
On Whirlwinds, Welkins and Wyverns: Westland's Fighters Part 2: The Welkin high-altitude fighter - By Nico Braas
Linder the Skin - A walkaround of the Fleet Air Arm Museum's KD 431 By Gary Hatcher
Rumpier Bombers - The Battleplane Concept - More investigations into early military aviation - By Jack Herris
Lancers, Linebackers, and Constant Guards - The F-111 Aardvark in South East Asia. An in-depth analysis of combat deployments - By Keith Peckover
Tip of the Spear - Part II. Carrier Air Wing 7 - USS Dwight D. Eisenhower - By Andy Evans
Books - Reviews of some of the latest books published worldwide
Shop and Web Guide
And Finally
As an enthusiast of military aircraft, friends and relatives often assume that I must be obsessed with the Spitfire and its ilk, and while I am not averse to that machine in its late form it is not really something that has ever captured my imagination. As a railway enthusiast too, I have often been subjected to well-meaning but ill-informed comments concerning the Flying Scotsman - an enormous kettle with few redeeming features as far as this diesel enthusiast is concerned. Do others, I wonder, steeped in the jargon and detail of a particular hobby, suffer the same? I must find a football fan some time and tell him how good a player Bobby Charlton is...
The point is there are many depths and corners to our abiding interest, and we are only able to probe into some of them in any given issue. That said, we have a particularly fine mix this month, with my personal favourite being the story of the RAAF Meteors over Korea. Written and researched by Russians, it relates the history of British jets flown by Australians against Russian pilots pretending to be Koreans - a tale of some diversity, and one that I hope will be well received by the reader who accosted me at the IPMS show in Telford to complain about the amount of coverage given to American types. No doubt he will choose to skip the F-111 in Vietnam, another long-overdue article that has been awaiting images. In the meantime I am pleased to present the usual eclectic mix of aviation past, present and - occasionally - future. My own current obsession is with the RWD-8, a type I invite readers to look up in Jane's Obscure Polish Training Aircraft of the Thirties if they have such a volume. Next month it may be the AMX, or the Chipmunk - who can tell? That is the satisfying thing about this particular branch of obsession - 'there are many mansions in Our Father's house'.
Gary Hatcher
Editor
