The Aviation Historian Magazine Issue 32 Vorige editie

Our cover story in this issue is the second half of an interview with the late Lt-Col Fern Villeneuve AFC RCAF, founder leader of Canada’s Golden Hawks aerobatic display team. Our front-cover image of four of the team’s Canadair Sabres, trailing coloured smoke while inverted above Niagara Falls, encapsulates the brio with which Villeneuve ran the operation. Pulling tight manoeuvres during aerobatics is a lot easier when wearing a g-suit to prevent greying-out, and this issue of TAH includes the story of just such a suit, adopted by British flyers during World War Two. Somewhat primitive, it was like wearing a chest-high pair of fisherman’s waders which were filled with two gallons of water. Not disconcerting in the least while attempting to keep an enemy aircraft in your sights. Elsewhere in TAH32 we explore how, during the Battle of Britain, Churchill’s “Few” had to fight a different war from the one they had been preparing for, forging fighting tactics “on the hoof” almost daily; the demise of the one-off Cierva Air Horse giant helicopter 70 years ago; Short Bros’ post-war political history; and a 1950s Hawker concept which looks like something from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Never say that TAH has not done its best to distract you from the Coronavirus pandemic. All this, and more, is illustrated with high-quality archive photographs and bespoke artwork.