Flight Characteristics of the P-51 Airplane is a WWII film designed as a preliminary How To guide for pilots, mechanics and other ground crew. The film has a slightly more upbeat tone than you might expect, with the narrator cracking jokes throughout (at the expense of the Germans of course) and generally keeping it light and…
The Rolls-Royce Merlin Owner’s Workshop Manual is a detailed look into the development, engineering and evolution of the legendary aero-engine that powered the both the British Spitfire and American P-51 Mustang. Rolls-Royce built over 150,000 Merlins by the time production stopped and a significant number of them still exist in museums and private collections around…
The Concorde Story is a vintage documentary about the development of the world’s first supersonic airliner, it was filmed during the early, heady days of the now retired aircraft and it provides a fascinating look into how the Concorde came to be – starting with early designs from WWII. With a running time of just…
Guy Martin’s Spitfire is a British documentary about the recovery and rebuild of a rare MK1 Spitfire from the French beach where it was crash landed in 1940 by RAF pilot Squadron Leader Geoffrey Stephenson. The Spitfire had slowly been buried under generations of beach sand so the recovery operation took weeks of digging and…
Barn finds come in all shapes and sizes, but very rarely do they come pre-fitted with a Rolls-Royce Merlin V12. After last week’s popular feature of a barn find Messerschmitt BF 109 (technically a Hispano Aviación HA-1112) we did some further digging and quickly realised that old warbirds have been slowly coming out of the…
It isn’t everyday we stumble across a barn find quite as remarkable as this Messerschmitt BF 109, or more accurately, this Hispano Aviación HA-1112. It isn’t commonly known that the Spaniards built licensed copies of the Messerschmitt from 1942 onwards, although they weren’t produced in any significant numbers till after the war due to constraints…
The P-51B Mustang was the variant fitted with the British V12 Merlin engine, the aircraft had originally been fitted with the Allison V12 but it wasn’t up to the task and pilots were frequently outperformed by their German rivals. The Merlin gave the Mustang a whole new lease on life, it was now significantly better…
TSR-2: The Untold Story is a fascinating documentary about an aircraft that almost no one outside the world of aviation-history-geekage has heard of. It would have been years, perhaps even decades, ahead of its time if it had been cleared for production but sadly the approval stamp never landed and it was relegated to the scrap heap….
The Avro Lancaster is a heavy bomber developed by the British during the Second World War and built in very large numbers – 7,377 had taken to the skies by the time the Avro Lincoln replaced it. The overwhelming majority of Lancasters were powered by four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines – arguably one of the best aero-engines…
The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Owner’s Manual is one of those books that anyone with even a passing interest in aviation or cold war history should have on their coffee table. The Blackbird was the fastest, highest flying aircraft in the world that could literally outrun surface-to-air missiles that had been launched to intercept it. The…
I can only imagine that Bond villains could potentially have difficultly sourcing suitably cinematic furniture to kit out their volcano lairs, although on retrospect I guess this could also apply to hedge fund managers, political lobbyists and certain petite North Korean dictators. Fortunately for the above mentioned scoundrels a company called Hangar 54 specialises in…
A deep-seated love of the formative years of aviation is an affliction that many of us struggle with, in fact if it wasn’t for the prohibitive cost of entry of aviation many of us would have a Tiger Moth, a Sopwith Camel or a Spitfire out in the garage parked next to the Porsche 911…
