At the beginning of the Cold War the United States’ and the Soviet Union’s main long range bomber was the Boeing B-29 and its Russian copy, the Tu-4. However, the development of the atomic bomb and the jet engine revolutionized the potential performance and striking power of strategic bombers and the Soviet Union began development…

By the beginning of the 1980s it was clear to United States defense planners that existing and envisaged air defense systems could detect and shoot down just about any aeroplane, making it impossible to effectively attack well defended targets. The solution to this problem appeared to be ‘stealth’ technology that made attacking aeroplanes invisible (or…

The P5M was a direct descendent of the Martin PBM Mariner that served with many air forces around the world during World War II. Towards the end of the war the US Navy began considering development of a more modern flying boat and the Martin company’s proposal for an improved PBM gained favour. The new…

The deHavilland Drover was an attempt to produce an aircraft to replace the venerable deHavilland DH-84 Dragon that has flown successfully around Australia from the mid 1930s. It was similar to the deHavilland twin engined Dove but with three engines, designed for use in regional and remote areas so it was rugged and simple to…

The B-36 ‘Peacemaker’ has one serious claim to fame; it was seriously big. This huge bomber, the largest ever made, became one of the United States most potent symbols of world wide military power because it could go anywhere and drop an astonishing weight of bombs including, or course, atomic and hydrogen bombs. It’s development…

Jack Northrop was a gifted aeronautical engineer with an obsession for producing the most aerodynamically efficient aeroplane possible. He reasoned that he could achieve that goal by taking away from the ideal aeroplane everything that was not necessary for it to fly, and that basically left him with nothing but a wing. In 1929 he…

The Lockheed C-5 was designed to meet a USAF requirement for a very large strategic transport to compliment its smaller transports such as the C-130 and C-141. Lockheed’s design proposal was selected, construction of the prototype began in August 1966 and it flew for the first time on 30 June 1968. Although initial plans were…

Somewhere buried deep in my hoard is a kit of the Curtiss Wright Demon which looks very strange to me, with a skinny tail which looks like it will fall off at any moment. One of these days I will make that kit, but, in the meantime, I recently came across the Kora 1/72 kit…

In the aftermath of World War II the Royal Air Force was determined to retain the strategic bombing capability it had built up, but armed with the new atomic bomb which would, planners hoped, provide a deterrent strong enough to prevent the outbreak of a new war. The result was specification B.35/46 for an aeroplane…