Aircraft
Arado Ar 234B-2 “Nachtigall”
This particular aircraft (WNr 140146) was flown by Hauptmann Kurt Bonow based in Oranienburg during March 1945. It seems that during the last weeks of the War he managed to engage some RAF Mosquito night fighters although he failed to down any of them. Some references mention that a cramped radar compartment in the aft fuselage section (that normally contained…
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Fighters Over Poland
P11 VERSUS THE LUFTWAFFE During the summer of 1939 the Polish air force found itself dealing with repeated violations of its airspace by photoreconnaissance Do17s of the Luftwaffe, and the experience of the P11c, the principal Polish fighter, was not encouraging. Unable to reach either the speeds or the altitudes…
Hawker Hunter
The Hawker Hunter is a transonic single seat fighter / ground attack monoplane, with swept-back wings, variable incidence tail plane, powered flying controls and cabin pressurisation. It is powered by a fifteen stage axial flow Rolls-Royce Avon MK 207 turbine engine developing 10,150 lbs thrust. The fuselage is of monocoque…
THE A-36 MUSTANG
First off, only for a very short time in mid- to late-1940, was the name ‘Apache’ applied to the Mustang – the A-36 specifically. In fact, at the time, the A-36 was not even on the drawing boards. The name was used, however, in several magazine advertisements in the late…
Ju-52 ”Kaleva”
Kaleva, registered OH-ALL, was a civilian Junkers Ju 52 passenger and transport plane, belonging to the Finnish carrier Aero O/Y. The aircraft was shot down by two Soviet Ilyushin DB-3 bombers during peacetime between the Soviet Union and Finland on June 14, 1940, while en route from Tallinn to Helsinki,…
Vickers-Armstrongs 447 Windsor
Designed to provide better performance than the Lancaster in the long-range bomber role, the Vickers Windsor had many interesting features, but suffered from protracted development and was cancelled in 1945. The B. 3/42 resulted from the merger of the B. 5/41 and the twin-engine Wellington replacement project. Vickers declared that…
Spitfires in North Africa I
Squadron Leader L. C. Wade, Officer Commanding No. 145 Squadron RAF, sitting in the cockpit of his Supermarine Spitfire HF Mark VIII at Triolo landing ground, south of San Severo, Italy, shortly before the end of his second tour of operations in the Mediterranean area, where he had become the…