The Aviation Show

Stephen Walker's Beyond was one of my reads of lockdown. Beyond covers the months leading up to Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight that made him the first human in space. Stephen has crafted a fantastic narrative that does not just focus on Gagarin but on the Chief Designer and the team that worked in such secrecy to put him in space. I sat down with Stephen on the day NASA returned to the moon with t...

The Challenger Disaster is one that still resonates nearly 40 years after that the tragedy that claimed seven astronauts 73 seconds into their flight. On the 10th November 2022, NASA announced that a 20-foot section of the orbiter had been found by a team searching for the lost Grumman Avengers of Flight 19. Today I am joined by two of the team of the History Channel's new series The Bermuda Trian...

The day job recently took me to Oz where on my last morning, I went to Moorabbin in Southern Melbourne to visit Ewan McArthur at the Moorabbin Air Museum. The museum is home to an eclectic collection of aircraft with the view to have as many of them as hands-on as possible. The star attraction is their Mk. XXI Beaufighter. Ewan kindly showed me around, and we recorded the tour for you. We do rambl...

The Fairey Swordfish was an aircraft out of time. Obsolete by the time it was called upon in the Second World War, it was an aircraft of contradictions. Kept in service because her replacement would have taken too much time and resources to build in numbers, the Swordfish was thrown into battles where she performed admirably. And also where it should never have been. Joining me today is author and...

Jesse L. Brown was the US Navy's first African-American Naval Aviator. With his squadron mates, onboard the USS Leyte in VF-32, Jesse and his wingman Thomas Hudner Jr. struck up a remarkable friendship that would lead to the tragic, heroic events of the 4th December 1950. Tom Hudner's actions would earn him the Medal of Honor, and Adam Makos would write their story in his book Devotion, soon to be...

The 1960s saw the true birth of international air travel. The glamour of the jet set was only matched by the glamour of the flight attendants that cared for them. as they dashed across the globe. At the forefront of this change in air travel were Pan American Airways and their powder blue uniformed stewardesses.  While the hyper-sexualised image of the stewardesses was capitalised upon by the airl...

A change of President in 1981 led to a complete change in US military posture, and with Roland Regan came the rebirth of the B-1 project as a much-refined B-1B with a slightly different role. Kenneth P. Katz is an Air Force Veteran and career aerospace engineer, returns to conclude the story of the B-1 as the aircraft is raced into service as the B-1B just in time for the Cold War to end. But, the...

Few modern aircraft capture the attention of the hardened AVGeek more than the Rockwell B-1B Lancer bomber. Designed at the crux of the Cold War, the journey to the aircraft that would enter service after those tensions had thawed began in the heady days of the 1950s when higher, faster and further was the order of the day. To get to the B-1B, we have to start with aircraft like the B-70 Valkrie,...

It is rare when you are doomscrolling Instagram that you find something truly wonderful. Out at Culver Props in Rolla, Missouri, Alaina Lewis makes wooden propellers and finding her on Instagram was a balm in a dark time. Seeing the incredible skill that goes into making true customer propellers for custom aircraft is a joy. And then I got to meet Alaina. Our conversation is wide-ranging as we dis...

The sigh of relief that goes up when the phrase "there is a drawing for that" is uttered in aviation restoration houses around the world is palpable. The excitement when tens of thousands of original North American Aviation drawings were announced as being passed to the AirCorps Library was akin to a party. The tale of how Ken Jungeberg saved a treasure trove from the fire is only part of my conve...

The 'Spitfire Summer' of 1940 is lodged in the heads of the British psyche like few other conflicts. Yet, the mix of aircraft that the RAF fielded in the early years of the Second World War were not the ones many remember, and the types that would become famous as the conflict wore on were still years away. Historian Adrian Phillips joined me to discuss the politics and battles the RAF went throug...

In his new book, Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb, James M. Scott breaks down the journey of the USAAF to the use of Napalm on the populace of Japan and, eventually, the Atomic Bomb, in a way that is knowledgeable, sensitive and shocking. Reading the experience of the Japanese civilians on the ground in the early hours of the 10th March 1945 liter...

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