A few months back I wrote about alternatives to the (still missing, still missed) FlightGlobal archive of Flight magazine, a key source for aviation history (for me, anyway). I forgot to mention that Flight's great rival, The Aeroplane (founded and edited by the egregious C. G. Grey), is also partially accessible through the Internet Archive. This is thanks to the Smithsonian, which has scanned and uploaded The Aeroplane's first 23 volumes covering 1911-1922 (except for the second half of 1920 1921 [thanks, John]). This is much more limited than the Internet Archive's Flight holdings, which cover 1909-1935; but it does nicely do for the First World War, for example. As with Flight, you can flip from page to page, search for text, or download in a variety of formats (including PDF). But because the scans are labelled somewhat erratically (most of them have the publication date as 1911, for example) they're a bit confusing to navigate. So I've gone through the available volumes and put them in a more usable order:
- 1911: vol. 1 (Jun-Jul)
- 1912: vol. 2 (Jan-Jun); vol. 3 (Jul-Dec)
- 1913: vol. 4 (Jan-Jun); vol. 5 (Jul-Dec)
- 1914: vol. 6 (Jan-Jun); vol. 7 (Jul-Dec)
- 1915: vol. 8 (Jan-Jun); vol. 9 (Jul-Dec)
- 1916: vol. 10 (Jan-Mar); vol. 10 (Apr-Jun); vol. 11 (Jul-Sep); vol. 11 (Oct-Dec)
- 1917: vol. 12 (Jan-Mar); vol. 12 (Apr-Jun); vol. 13 (Jul-Sep); vol. 13 (Oct-Dec)
- 1918: vol. 14 (Jan-Mar); vol. 14 (Apr-Jun); vol. 15 (Jul-Sep); vol. 15 (Oct-Dec)
- 1919: vol. 16 (Jan-Mar); vol. 16 (Apr-Jun); vol. 17 (Jul-Sep); vol. 17 (Oct-Dec)
- 1920: vol. 18 (Jan-Jun); vol. 19 (Jul-Dec)
- 1921: vol. 20 (Jan-Jun); vol. 21 (Jul-Dec) (missing)
- 1922: vol. 22 (Jan-Jun); vol. 23 (Jul-Dec)
Enjoy!
Image source: Aeroplane, 8 June 1911, 21.
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Roger Horky
On many online databases, especially non-academic ones such as Hathi Trust, Google Books, Internet Archive, and the Ike Skelton Combined Arms Research Library, publication date indicates when a periodical first appeared. As a result, you'll see things like Antiaircraft Journal identified as nineteenth century publication, because its predecessor (Coast Artillery Journal) dates from that far back. you have to be pretty careful when composing search inquiries, but the rewards can be considerable. I've filled six or seven 32- and 64-gig zip drives with material I've downloaded from these sources.
John Hayles
Actually, it is volume 21 that is missing. Your link to volume 21 points to volume 19. I wish more volumes were available!