Note: the photograph turned out to be real after all. See here. In a comment to an earlier post, Alan pointed out that it has been claimed that the photo I used was a propaganda fake. As I have previously discussed the subject of fake combat photos, I was appropriately mortified at the thought of […]
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] He 111 over London, 7 September 1940. Image source: Wikimedia Commons. So, I’ve looked at J. M. Spaight’s predictions in The Sky’s the Limit about how the British fighters would fare in the Battle of Britain, and how the German ones would too. All that remains is to examine his
[Update: due to my misunderstanding of a key word, this post is fundamentally misconceived. Exercise due caution!] Hello everybody, I seem to have got here at last, it’s been a long long time but here I am and jolly glad I am to be here at last. I bring [inaudible] from the people of England
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] Fw 198. Image source: Current Aviation, 26 November 1943, via Model Airplane Kits. In the course of my research, I get to read many predictions about the future, partiularly the future of warfare. One of the reasons I like doing this is that it helps to restore the uncertainty of
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] This is the front cover of a book by J. M. Spaight on British airpower, called The Sky’s the Limit. It was published in 1940, a not-insignificant year for the RAF. In fact, this ‘New and up-to-date’ edition was published in August, right in the middle of the Battle of
As promised, here’s a revamped version of the speed plot I did the other day, this time distinguishing between biplanes (and triplanes), monoplanes and jets (just the one — the Meteor). It’s now a bit harder to read, though — it’s still red for fighters and blue for bombers, but now biplanes are represented by
Last year I was playing with a plotting program for Mac OS X, which was pretty good, but not quite satisfactory. I’ve found a better one, Plot, which is free (as in beer), fairly easy to use, and very customisable. It has its own idiosyncrasies, but I like it a lot. Here’s an example plot,
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] The kick-off for the football1 World Cup final is only hours away. To mark the occasion, here’s Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard, head of the Royal Air Force, on the correct use of airpower (in 1923, in the context of a hypothetical war with France): Would it be best
[I posted this last Wednesday, but somehow, it was marked as “private” rather than “published”, so nobody saw it but me! So I’m fixing that and bumping it to the top.] The talk went off pretty well, I think — at least I didn’t hear any snoring and got some good questions at the end.
Regarding the Japanese Air Force, which many people, he said, were inclined to discount as a second-rate body equipped with obsolete aircraft and lacking skillful and daring pilots, Air Vice-Marshal Pulford said that he certainly does not underrate its capacity. When it was suggested to him that it might be compared with the Italian Air
