Description

The 37th issue of The Aviation Historian takes a characteristically varied tour of some of the more unusual nooks and crannies of aviation history.  Highlights include: Ricardo Lezon’s discovery of a batch of documents relating to the sole Fairey Flycatcher sent to b for evaluation in 1929 led to a joint article with naval aviation specialist Matthew Willis; Guy Ellis’s two-part series on the British South Africa Police Reserve Air Wing begins in this issue; A double-sided three-page foldout of photographer Peter Lewis’s stunning images of Swiss Air Force Hunters, to accompany his article on the Hawker fighter’s re-rolling as a ground-attacker in the early 1980s; Prof Keith Hayward’s analysis of the political background to the Panavia MRCA, which became the Tornado; Dr Andrew Arthy traces the final days of the Luftwaffe’s tankbusting Junkers Ju 87G Stukas in the closing stages of World War Two; Leif Hellström describes how, in the 1950s, Sweden sent aircraft and personnel to the Caribbean to set the Dominican Republic’s air force on a firm footing; and Lennart Andersson examines the Royal Iraqi Air Force’s first two decades, from its formation in 1931 to the early 1950s. Leading airline historian Maurice Wickstead describes the early years of Ethiopian Air Lines, one of Africa’s most enduring and successful carriers; Ralph Pegram investigates Short’s S.32 landplane project, an unusual 1930s departure from the company’s more familiar flying-boat airliners; Ugo Vicenzi’s detailed – and very well-illustrated – article on the immortal Isotta Fraschini Asso broad-arrow piston engine; The second part of an article on American display pilots in Japan before and during World War One; The ultimately tragic story of Brazilian airship pioneer Augusto Severo; plus more.