In the 1930s the Russian word for Istribityel (Fighter) was synonymous with the name Polikarpov. The first Polikarpov fighter, the I-1, was an advanced monoplane fighter powered by an American Liberty engine that flew in 1923. Although it did not enter service the following I-3 biplane fighter flew in 1928 and about 400 went into…

During the 1930s many of the world’s leading aviation nations, Germany, the United States, Britain and Japan became interested in the idea of dive bombing. Since the beginning of military aviation delivering a bomb onto the target accurately had been all but impossible except under ideal circumstances so the idea of using an aeroplane diving…

People who say that French inter-war aeroplanes are ugly are sometimes (not always, but sometimes) right. But in cruising the internet looking for information and pictures of this obscure little French aeroplane I came across yet more of these ignorant and uninformed comments. The Liore et Olivier H.43 might have been many things – obsolete…

Like most naval air forces, the British Fleet Air Arm languished well behind ground based air forces when it came to new developments in aeronautical technology. Well into the final years of the 1930s it’s main aeroplanes were biplanes while on the land all-metal monoplanes became the order of the day. In April 1935 tenders…

In 1930 the French Service Technique de l’ Aéronautique issued specifications that would give the air force a new fighter capable of matching anything else in the air. In typical French style eleven basic designs were selected for development and a total of thirteen prototypes from ten different companies were eventually built for the competition.…

The deHavilland DH-86 is a very important airliner in Australia’s air transport history because it marked a new beginning in the 1930s. Before that, the country’s airlines had flown a variety of smaller aeroplanes on air mail routes in remote areas. In 1933 the Australian government agreed with the British government to set up an…

Marcel Bloch, who had made a name for himself as a designer of first class aeroplanes before World War Two, returned to the field after spending the German occupation in the resistance with a new name, Marcel Dassault. In the 1950s his company designed and produces one of the world’s great fighters of that time,…

A few weeks ago I was reminded of a talk I gave at a dinner held to mark the centenary of the Wright Brother’s first flight in December 1903. Looking at the famous photo of that flight reminded me that one of the first models my parents bought for me as a present was the…

During the 1950s many countries and companies experimented with vertical take-off and landing aeroplanes. If successful they would enable air forces to operate fleets of aircraft that did not need large aerodromes and vulnerable runways so they would be able to disperse their aeroplanes more widely so they would be less vulnerable to attack. Despite…

In 1940 the standard equipment of the French Air Force proved to be inferior to the fighters employed by other countries such as Germany and Britain. As a result the French were forced to purchase Curtiss Hawk 75As as a stopgap until their next generation of fighters were ready for large scale service and by…

Japan’s rapid expansion into the Pacific during the early stages of the Pacific War led to the need for a fighter that could give close air support to amphibious landings in places where Japanese forces didn’t have any landing strips. Mitsubishi put floats on their Zero fighter but Kawanishi was asked to design a new…

Here’s an aeroplane that I knew almost nothing about and which you may not have know existed, until now. I’m one of those people who usually makes models because the subject looks interesting or because they fit into one of my current hobby-horses which is, of course, French aviation. So when Azmodels released kits of…