The Aviation Historian Magazine Issue 31 Zurück Ausgabe

The very epitome of the small, nimble Cold War jet fighter, the Northrop F-5 has operated with around 20 different countries across the globe. Our cover story in this issue (and what a cover photograph!) tells the story of its career with the Swiss Air Force, often played out against stunning Alpine backdrops. Another Cold War story in this issue features the political exasperations behind the Anglo-French Variable Geometry project of the 1960s — which, although it came to nothing itself, eventually led to the Panavia Tornado. Other articles in TAH31 explore Italy’s earliest airlines; the establishment of “The Hump”, the high-level air transport route across the Himalayas between China and India, pioneered in World War Two; and the inner workings of the Bristol Hercules sleeve-valve radial aero-engine. More offbeat subjects include secret German and Soviet testing of (banned) airborne chemical weapons during the inter-war years; the Douglas 8A ground-attacker in Peruvian service; and the work of Louis Damblanc, a French inventor who just after World War One created a very early form of tilt-rotor aircraft (spoiler alert: it ended badly). All this, and more, is illustrated with high-quality archive photographs and bespoke artwork.