Description

This 34th quarterly issue of The Aviation Historian includes: The 50th anniversary of the 1971 collapse of Rolls-Royce, a jewel in the crown of British industry; Ralph Pegram uses contemporary documents to examine BOAC’s often-conflicting perspectives on the findings of the wartime Brabazon Committee; Maurice Wickstead charts the epic history of one of Europe’s oldest and most resilient airlines, the Czech company ČSA, founded in 1923; Vic Flintham begins a two-part series on the Allies’ Rover system of close air support during World War Two, whereby “cab ranks” of fighter-bombers could be called upon at short notice to attack targets in fast-changing battlefield conditions; An examination of the role played by British aircrew in air combat during the Korean conflict; Albert Grandolini continues his three-part biography of Cambodian military pilot Major Su Sampong, recounting vivid first-hand experiences of flying ground-attack MiG-17s, Fouga Magisters and T-28s; Babak Taghvaee reveals details of Iranian use of Boeing 747s as military transports and air-refuelling tankers; Leif Hellström explores UN peacekeeping air activities by a very international squadron of Douglas C-47s in the newly-established Republic of the Congo in the early 1960s; A French submarine designer’s brief flirtation with multiplane aircraft in 1908–09; The USA’s less-than-successful acquisition of Italy’s semi-rigid airship Roma in 1921; A completely bizarre 1950s Royal Aircraft Establishment concept for a fur-covered, tip-rotor-propelled Mach 5 personal transport.