All articles in Aviation
19th September, 2024 in Aviation, Biography & Memoir, Military
To all who fell at Arnhem – Allied and German
In 1934, aged just 16, Louis Hagen was sent to Lichtenberg concentration camp after being betrayed for an off-hand joke by a Nazi-sympathising family maid. Mercifully, his time there was cut short thanks to the intervention of a school friend’s father, and he escaped to the UK so…
7th November, 2023 in Aviation, Biography & Memoir
What’s it like on the edge of space? The life of a Concorde pilot
Concorde was conceived in the 1950s, first flew in the 1960s and then took over 2.5million people to ‘the edge of space’ at twice the speed of sound for the rest of the 20th century. And into the 21st. Designed and developed by a team of far sighted British and French engineers,…
17th August, 2022 in Aviation
The exciting history of aviation: Manchester or bust
The history of aviation is full of excitement, drama and derring-do. These can all be found in the following tale, when two pilots battled for glory. In 1906 a UK newspaper offered £10,000 to the first aviator to fly from London to Manchester. Pilots rubbed their chins: if this w…
21st July, 2022 in Aviation, Biography & Memoir, Women in History
Pauline Gower: Pioneering leader of the Spitfire women
Pauline Mary de Peauly Gower was born on 22 July 1910 at Sandown Court in Tunbridge Wells, the younger daughter of Robert and Dorothy Gower. It was an auspicious year for aviation pioneers: on 23 April Claude Grahame-White, who trained at Louis Bleriot’s flying school, had made t…
15th September, 2020 in Aviation, Military
Upside down and nothing on the clock in the Battle of Britain
For most people, the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 was all fighters whooshing over the sunlit blue skies of southern England. It was in many ways a very public battle eagerly watched by thousands of anxious spectators far below and even captured on film to be seen by mi…
23rd January, 2020 in Aviation, Women in History
Beatrice ‘Tilly’ Shilling: Celebrated aeronautical and motorcycle engineer
Born at Waterlooville in Hampshire to master butcher Henry Shilling and his wife Annie, Tilly and her three sisters attended the high school for girls in Dorking. Already unorthodox, by the age of 15 she knew she wanted to be an engineer and already owned a second hand motorcycle…
17th May, 2019 in Aviation, History, Trivia & Gift
Ten things you might not know about the Apollo Missions
It has been over 50 years since the space race and NASA’s sprint for the moon with the Apollo Missions. Here author Norman Ferguson reveals ten facts you may not know about this giant leap for mankind… 1. The first astronauts to fly in a Saturn V went to the Moon Apollo 8 was i…
25th March, 2019 in Aviation, Local & Family History
Bennachie’s casualties of war
2019 marked the 80th anniversary of the declaration of war on 3 September 1939 and, just a few hours into the conflict, the Bennachie hill-range in Aberdeenshire was witness to an accident resulting in the deaths of two RAF airmen. Bennachie is of course a magnet for wa…
28th February, 2019 in Aviation
Concorde: An icon in the news
On 2 March 1969, Concorde took off from Toulouse for what was described as a ‘faultless’ maiden test flight. The flight lasted just 27 minutes, but it flew Concorde into history as surely the most iconic airliner of all time – as beloved by the fortunate travellers on board as by…
14th February, 2019 in Aviation
Alcock and Brown: First to fly the Atlantic non-stop
Seven-year-old Harry Sullivan was in bed with measles in Clifden, on the west coast of Ireland, on the damp morning of 15 June 1919. He recalls hearing a terrible noise coming from the sky: “I rushed outside to investigate. I was just in time to see this greyish-coloured machine…
10th September, 2018 in Aviation, Military
The other Battle of Britain Day
As the high summer cloud cleared to reveal a fine and sunny morning, nobody knew that Sunday, 15 September 1940 would be a pivotal day in the Battle of Britain. The two main Luftwaffe attacks of the day, one in late morning and the other in early afternoon, for once met with over…
9th July, 2018 in Aviation, Military
Bomber Command in the Battle of Britain: Stories of The Many
White vapour trails twisting and turning in an azure sky, Spitfires and Hurricanes roaring through the thin air, bright sunlight glinting off their wings, machine guns spitting out destruction and defiance, grateful crowds far below gazing in awe at the gallant modern-day knights…