In 1923 the Communist Party in Italy was declared illegal and the Italian aircraft designer, Roberto Bartini, moved to the Soviet Union. He worked for the aviation detachment of the Red Army for some years but his creative talent saw him in charge of his own design group by 1930. His first design, a single…

In the 1950s military planners on both sides of the iron-curtain turned their attention to designing weapons systems capable of intercepting and destroying enemy supersonic bombers armed with nuclear weapons before they could deliver their payloads. One of the systems developed on both sides was an interceptor capable of flying long ranges at high speed…

By the mid 1930s most major aeroplane making nations were working on long range passenger carrying flying boats to equip their ‘flag-carrying’ airlines. For Britain and her dominions it was the Short Empire Class flying boats that also equipped Qantas Empire Airways from 1938. The flying boat had many advantages, primarily they did not need…

Following the invention of radar just before the beginning of World War II it became increasingly difficult for warplanes to reach their targets unannounced. By the end of the war radar was an important weapon in defence against air attacks and thereafter radar, in league with air defence weaponry, made defence against air attacks more…

After World War II the airliner market was flooded with an almost endless supply of extremely cheap Douglas DC-3/C-47s. They made it possible for new airlines to begin flying and established airlines to expand rapidly to fill the growth in air services in the late 1940s and early 1950s. However, as time passed these old…

Even while Boeing was developing its long range 707 airliner in the mid 1950s it saw the need for a shorter range passenger jet to serve the United States domestic market on routes as long as trans-continental New York-Los Angeles flights. Studies led to the development of a three engined jet transport using many components…

By 1961 the Soviet Union had built up a considerable lead in the space race. It had launched the first artificial satellite in 1957 and the first manned space flight in April 1961. By 25 May 1961 the only American manned space flight had been a fifteen minute sub-orbital flight. Even so, on that day…

What I really wanted was a kit of the Antonov An-24 which is the Russian equivalent of the Fokker F27 Friendship. I thought it would be interesting to stand them next to each other to show how different designers came to a similar conclusion when faced by similar aeronautical problems. But since there is not…

Like several other notable aeroplane designs of its time, such as the Bristol Blenheim and Dornier Do17, this Amiot medium bomber first saw the light of day in the guise of a high speed postal aeroplane. However, when the Amiot 341 was displayed at the Paris Salon in 1936 it already had a bomb bay.…