The Aviation Show

In an Aviation Show first, we teamed up with Paul Woodadge of  @WW2TV  to do a multi Live Stream! This is the audio from our discussion with Dr Victoria Taylor. Victoria joins us to discuss her new book, Eagle Days: Life and Death for the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Eagles Days looks at the long summer of 1940 from the other side of the channel and offers some surprising insights...

80 years ago, on the 3rd May 1945, Hawker Typhoons of the RAF's 2nd Tactical Air Force attacked German shipping in Lubeck Bay, north of Hamburg. They succeeded in sinking three large ships and damaging another. Tragically, these ships were crammed with Concentration Camp prisoners that had been evacuated from the Neuengamme concentration camp; over 7000 were killed in the last days of the Second W...

🛩️Welcome to part 2 of our tour of the Beechcraft Heritage Museum in Tullahoma, Tennessee, with Museum President, Charles Parish. In this episode we look into Beechcraft's WW2 aircraft like the venerablke AT-11 and bring the story up to date with the latest Beechcraft aircraft. 🛩️Visit the Beechcraft Heritage Museum website at: https://beechcrafthm.org/ 🛩️Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beechcr...

🛩️The Beechcraft Heritage Museum in Tullahoma, Tennessee, is my new favourite aircraft museum in the world. The museum is dedicated to the story of the Beechcraft and Travel Air brands and the incredible couple that drove the brand forward, Walter and Olive Ann Beech. Museum President, Charles Parish, very kindly gave us a tour around this huge collection of Beechcraft aircraft from the very first...

Just down the road from Washington, DC, is the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Virginia Triangle. Here, they tell the story of The Corps, from its founding to its future. Dr Larry Burke is the aviation curator, and he showed us what goes into telling the tale of Marine Corps aviation before handing off to the arms and armor curator, my buddy Jon Bernstein, to show us the gems in the rest of...

Dr. Jennifer Levasseur, the Space Shuttle and International Space Station curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, joins us for a walkaround Space Shuttle Discovery in her home at the National Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center. Jennifer tells us all about caring for objects as big as a Space Shuttle and as personal as the watches the astronauts wore to space. Join us for an o...

🛫 Join us on Patreon! Join from just £3 + VAT a month to get ad-free episodes, chat with Matt, and receive a personalised welcome pack. Click here for more info: https://www.patreon.com/theaviationshow ----------------------------------------------------- Malcolm Collum, Chief Conservator at the Air and Space Museum, joins us to discuss the nuanced distinction between conserving and restoring art...

The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM)'s annex at Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC. To call it an annex is misleading, this place is massive! Home to an incredible collection of aircraft, this episode, our 101st, is just me trying to talk you around the place while trying to take it all in, especially when confronted with Enola Gay. --...

Here it is, our 100th Episode! And the first under the new name! In February, my daughter and I headed to the USA and visited several aviation museums to celebrate reaching our 100th episode. So went for the OG of museums for the 100th, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. While it is still undergoing the renovations, it was my first time back in nearly 35 years. Join...

We are re-branding and broadening out! The Damcasters is no more, welcome to The Aviation Show. This video explains why I've changed the name and we also have a sneak preview of our #CentennialSeries of episodes, which we filmed in the USA in February. Exciting times! ----------------------------------------------------- 🛫 Join us on Patreon! Join from just £3 + VAT a month to get ad-free episode...

🛫Ben Smotherman was a B-17 pilot who was shot down on his 7th mission over occupied Europe in 1943. He was captured and ended up in the POW camp Stalag Luft III. While he was interned, he drew and painted his experiences in the camp. He also created the intrepid war correspondent Penny, the star of one of the camp newspapers comic strips. His daughter, astronaut Dr Jan Davis, joins us to tell us...

This week, we examine the mysterious crash of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator AL-523 on July 4, 1943, which claimed the life of General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the Polish Prime Minister in Exile. Chris Wroblewski and Garth Barnard, authors of the book "Sabotage! An In-Depth Investigation of the 1943 Liberator Crash that Killed Polish General Sikorski " join me to delve into the myriad of conspiracy th...

🛫Join us as Joe Wilding helps us explore the store of the McDonnell-Douglas F-110A Spectre, which became the legendary F-4 Phantom II, filmed at the Wings Over the Rockies Museum. We have a look at how the lessons learned in the development of the F-101 Voodoo shaped what could be the perfect fighter aircraft. Find out more at the Wings Over the Rockies website: https://wingsmuseum.org/ Check out...

Joe Wilding returns to explore the rich history of the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo, filmed at the Wings Over the Rockies Museum. We discuss the significance of the F-101's twin-engine design, comparing it with other Century Series aircraft and shedding light on its influence on the F-4 Phantom's design. Find out more at the Wings Over the Rockies website: https://wingsmuseum.org/ Check out their YouTub...

✈️ This week, we examine the Wings Over the Rockies Museum's Rockwell B-1A Lancer in depth. Joe Wilding explains the differences between the B-1A and the operational B-1B and highlights the design changes made to the A-model to accommodate the evolving role that the B-model continues to fulfil today. Find out more at the Wings Over the Rockies website: https://wingsmuseum.org/ Check out their YouT...

✈️Stewart Bailey is the Curator of the Wings Over the Rockies museum in Denver, Colorado. Join us as he discusses Lowry Air Force Base's history and the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum's amazing aircraft collection. Find out more at the Wings Over the Rockies website: https://wingsmuseum.org/ Check out their YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@Wings_Museum Follow them on Ins...

Don Bennett was rated by the future Bomber Command boss, Arthur Harris, as "the most efficient airman" he had ever known. In part two of our chat with Bennett's biographer, Ian Campbell, curator of the Bennett/Vial Archive at the Queensland Air Museum, we get into the incredible record-breaking flights Don flew in Mercury and his return to the RAF at the outbreak of war. Relentless Skies: Volume 1...

Air Vice Marshall Don Bennett CB, CBE, DSO was a singular man. His story of leading the Path Finder Force in the Second World War has gone down in legend. But what led him to that command? Ian Campbell, curator of the Bennett/Vial Archive at the Queensland Air Museum, has published the first volume of his biography of Bennett, Relentless Skies, which is superb. Ian joins us to discuss Bennett's li...

How did cultural perceptions influence Western assessments of Japanese military potential? Justin Pyke joins us to discuss the Allies' capabilities assessments of Japan in the years before hostilities started in December 1941. Join us as we delve into the intelligence failures and misconceptions that contributed to the underestimation of Japanese air power leading up to World War II. Join us on Bl...

🛫Visit the Ekster website today via my partner link: https://partner.ekster.com/Damcasterspod and use my code THEDAMCASTERS to get up to a 55% discount in the Ekster Black Friday Sale!!! ----------------------------------------------------- Join us for Part 2 of our look at the Combat Bullseye tests with author Chris Gibson. Phase 2 of Combat Bullseye would see the Covair B-58 Hustler used as a c...

🛫Visit the Ekster website today via my partner link: https://partner.ekster.com/Damcasterspod and use my code THEDAMCASTERS to get up to a 55% discount in the Ekster Black Friday Sale!!! ----------------------------------------------------- Join us for Part 1 of our look at the Combat Bullseye tests with author Chris Gibson. In 1967, the US Air Force's Tactical Air Command reached out to their co...

🛫 Become a Damcasteer today on Patreon! Join from just £3+VAT a month to get ad-free episodes, chat with Matt and a welcome pack. Click here for more info: https://www.patreon.com/thedamcasters ----------------------------------------------------- Welcome to a new show on The Damcasters, where Andy Wright of Aircrew Book Review and I will discuss the latest in aviation books! 🛩️Check out the Airc...

Join us for Part 3 of our series on Boeing's Fortresses, the evergreen B-52 Stratofortress! 🛩️Watch all of our Boeing's Fortresses mini-series as they drop here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpytFew7euhmG92JX9NVUkl4ZbgZ7VmSU 🛩️Check out Ben Skipper's first visit to The Damcasters on Civil Aviation's First 100 Years right here: https://www.thedamcasterspod.com/podcast/100-years-of-civil-a...

Join us for Part 2 of our series on Boeing's Fortresses, the remarkable B-29 Superfortress! Ordered from Boeing's drawing board and costing $3b in 1940s money, the delivery system for the atomic bomb cost even more than the weapon itself. But that is only part of the remarkable tale Ben Skipper has to share with us. 🛩️Catch all the Boeing's Fortresses Mini-Series as they drop here: https://www.the...

Join us for Part 1 of our series on Boeing's Fortresses, the incredible B-17 Flying Fortress! 🛩️Check out Ben Skipper's first visit to The Damcasters on Civil Aviation's First 100 Years right here: https://youtu.be/upQyb-yEvzc 🛩️Catch all the Boeing's Fortresses Mini-Series as they drop here: https://www.thedamcasterspod.com/tag/boeing-fortresses/ 🛩️Buy Ben's Flight Craft books from Pen and Sword...