Fairey Swordfish – fluke victor?
A friend who has no small knowledge of military matters put the following to me recently: ‘We all have different perspectives and experiences and mine lead me to say this: […]
Category Archives: WW2 History
Postwar Fireflies and Seafires, HMS Illustrious
I am once again indebted to Dave Bull for sharing his fantastic collection of images of HMS Illustrious with Naval Air History. These photographs date from the immediate postwar period […]
The Rarest Seabird
During the early part of 1940, Britain and France were scrambling to acquire sources of modern fighting aircraft from wherever they could. At that time there were serious fears that […]
Fleet Air Arm twins, HMS Illustrious
The following series of photographs from the Dave Bull collection (see previous post for images of prototype naval aircraft) depicting postwar naval aircraft landing on aircraft carriers, believed to be […]
Blackburn Skua book reprinted
One of my non-fiction books, a history of a WW2 naval dive bomber known as the Blackburn Skua, has just been reprinted by MMP Books. For more information on the […]
Prototypes and trials, HMS Illustrious
Naval Air History is very lucky to have been given access to Dave Bull’s wonderful collection of photographs of aircraft on HMS Illustrious in the late 1940s-early 1950s. The first […]
An event in the early career of Captain Eric Brown
With the anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic making headlines, the legendary Captain Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown has come to even greater prominence. Captain Brown flew a Grumman Martlet fighter […]
P-51D Mustang from the sea
North American Aviation P-51D Mustang 44-14574 ‘Little Zippie’ now resides in the East Essex Aviation Museum, Jaywick, Essex, after lying on the seabed for more than 30 years. The remains […]
The Aviation Historian – Issue 3 review
The Aviation Historian launched without fanfare in October 2012. This was a far quieter start than was deserved by a publication that is quite unique in the ranks of aviation […]
Fleet Air Arm Museum reserve collection
The Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton has the biggest collection of naval aircraft in Europe. The main collection is unquestionably impressive, but the museum also holds a reserve collection […]
Barracuda interview on Airplane Geeks
The aviation podcast ‘Airplane Geeks’ programme for 30 January 2013, Episode 233, features an interview with Matt Willis on the Fairey Barracuda. You can listen to the episode online here […]
Heinkel He115 brought into the sun at Sola
On 2 June 2012, a rare Heinkel He115 was raised from the sea at Sola near Stavanger in Norway, by a team from the Sola Historic Aviation Museum and Birger […]
Naval aircraft, through their creators’ eyes
The magazine adverts of the 1930s-40s provide a fascinating view of how naval aircraft manufacturers saw themselves, and wished others to see them. During this period, artwork in the aviation […]
The Unsung Ark Royal
When the current HMS Ark Royal (R07) leaves Portsmouth early next year for a Turkish scrapyard, it mark only the second time in 99 years that there will not be […]
A recipe for obsolescence? British naval torpedo bomber development in the 1930s
The Fleet Air Arm led developments in torpedo attack using landplanes flying from aircraft carriers between the two world wars. How is it then, that until the last two years […]
