July/August 2023

Flight Journal

The Aviation Adventure - Past, Present & Future

Flight Journal1 min read
Flight Journal
Editorial Director Louis DeFrancesco Executive Editor Debra Cleghorn Bud Anderson, James P. Busha, Ted Carlson, Eddie J. Creek, Doug DeCaster, Robert S. DeGroat, John Dibbs, Robert F. Dorr, Jim Farmer, Paul Gillcrist, Phil Haun, Randy Jolly, Frederic
Flight Journal11 min read
Sabre-rattling
I GREW UP IN TOLEDO, OHIO with my mother, who provided the most influence in my life and my two sisters. My father, who was a World War I veteran, had died when I was only seven years old, right at the beginning of the Second World War. Life was toug
Flight Journal3 min read
“Gentlemen, You Had A Race…?”
Hoover’s now iconic phrase was the cue commencing the first-ever air start for Unlimited class racers at the inaugural National Championship Air Races a few miles northeast of Reno, Nevada in 1964. In early March, the Reno Air Racing Association (RAR
Flight Journal2 min read
No Guns, Just Cameras!
OUR FEATURE STORY, “SPITFIRE SPY” by fighter pilot Clive Rowley MBE RAF (Ret.), reads like a spy thriller and is full of unauthorized, clandestine missions by Flt. Lt. Ted Powles during the Korean War over Communist China. Powles pushed his Spitfire
Flight Journal9 min read
SPITFIRE SPY over China
Flight Lieutenant Edward “Ted” Powles, an RAF Spitfire pilot based at Kai Tak, Hong Kong, flew secret and clandestine, high-altitude photographic reconnaissance missions over communist China in a Spitfire PR Mk XIX during the Korean War. His Spitfire
Flight Journal1 min read
Spitfire PR Mk Xix
The Spitfire PR.XIX was the last of the specialized unarmed photo reconnaissance variants of the Spitfire, the only PR version of the Spitfire with the Rolls-Royce 37-liter, V-12, 2,000hp Griffon engine (Griffon 66) and arguably the finest Spitfire o
Flight Journal1 min read
Spitfire Pr.xix Ps852
This aircraft was built at Eastleigh, Southampton, with a pressurized cockpit and fitted with a Rolls-Royce Griffon 66 engine. It was completed in October 1944. It was delivered to the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit at Benson in January 1945 and al
Flight Journal3 min read
Flying the SPITFIRE PR.XIX
ON FIRST ACQUAINTANCE, a Griffon-engine Spitfire looks and feels different from its Merlin-engine sisters. It is almost as if it is an entirely different aircraft, despite having fundamentally the same airframe. It has the classic lines of the Spitfi
Flight Journal11 min read
Payback
As I sat silently in my B-25—shrewdly named “Fickle Finger of Fate”—awaiting the signal from the Navy deckhand to start my engines, I thought long and hard about how I ended up here and about the unknown that lay ahead. Sitting on the pitching deck o
Flight Journal9 min read
Flying The Roc!
The first time Stratolaunch test pilot and director of flight operations Evan Thomas beheld the company’s massive six-engine, high-wing, twin-fuselage, payload-launch aircraft, he was “a bit daunted.” “I’ll be honest, the first time I looked at it I
Flight Journal2 min read
BA Swallow
The British Aircraft (BA) Swallow originated in Germany in 1927 as the Klemm L.25, a tandem two-seat, low-wing, all-wood monoplane. Klemm first exported to Britain in March 1929 and started a small “flood.” Over the next four years, 27 examples follo
Flight Journal1 min read
Subscriber Alert!
Attention subscribers, please be aware of fraudulent subscription agencies that act on our behalf. Certain subscription agencies are not authorized to represent Air Age Media nor are they affiliated with us in any way. Please do not give out any pers
Flight Journal2 min read
Aftermath & Lessons Learned
Just about 11 months after Ship-2 crashed, then Maj. Dick Reynolds returned to the air. The aircraft was a DeHavilland Beaver, and the invitation to fly it came from Col. Jimmy Doolittle III, the grandson of the famous Army Air Corps/USAF pilot who l
Flight Journal9 min read
Forgiveness
By the time Lieutenant General Richard Reynolds retired from the USAF in 2005, he’d had a distinguished 34-year career as a B-52 pilot, an Air Force test pilot with experience flying 72 different aircraft types, a B-2 system program office director,
Flight Journal1 min read
Classifieds
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Flight Journal3 min read
Keep the A-10 Flying!
FROM MY PERSPECTIVE as a retired U.S. Army attack helicopter aviator, we owe it to ground soldiers on the front lines to keep the A-10 Warthog Close Air Support airplane in service until a replacement of better capability can be fielded. Additionally
Flight Journal1 min read
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