I’ve been very fortunate to have been around the Avro Vulcan for the last 15 to 18 years, going back to the days when XH558 was at Bruntingthorpe. I was also lucky enough to see her final flight 11 years ago.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit XH558 again and climb inside the cockpit.

Going back after all that time, either I’ve put on a bit of weight or the Vulcan is a lot more cramped inside than I remembered.

From the outside it looks absolutely enormous, but once you climb inside it’s a completely different story.

Former Vulcan Navigator Plotter Andy Marson described it to me as an “inverse TARDIS” huge on the outside and surprisingly small on the inside. Having climbed back inside, I can see exactly what he means.

The pilot and co-pilot sat at the front, with the Navigator Plotter, Navigator Radar and Air Electronics Officer behind them.

Some of the original equipment has now been removed from XH558, but Andy explained that when he flew on Vulcans, pretty much everything around the three rear crew positions was being used.

That really struck me. In the pre-digital age, the crew were working with all those separate instruments, switches, radar and navigation equipment around them.

Then you look forward at the pilot and co-pilot positions, sitting slightly higher up, and they don’t exactly look spacious either.

Andy joked that if you were a tall pilot sitting on the left-hand side, you could end up with your neck slightly crooked by the time you landed. Looking at the space they had, you can understand what he meant.

XH558 later had another interesting chapter in her history when she became one of six Vulcans converted to K2 tankers in 1982.

Three additional fuel tanks could be carried in the Vulcan’s huge bomb bay, and during my visit I was able to climb into the bomb bay and also see one of those large tanks outside the aircraft. It gives you a much better idea of the amount of space available.

A Hose Drum Unit was fitted at the rear of the aircraft to allow it to refuel other aircraft in flight.

I have a particular fondness for that part of the story because I worked on Victor tankers and serviced the Hose Drum Units on those aircraft, both the centreline and wing-mounted units.

So seeing the same basic refuelling system fitted to a Vulcan connected two very different parts of RAF history for me.

Going back inside XH558 after all these years made me look at the aircraft slightly differently. We tend to remember the Vulcan for its size, shape and unmistakable sound, but inside you start thinking much more about the people who had to operate all that equipment in such a confined space.

I’d be interested to hear from anyone who flew or worked on Vulcans. What were they actually like operationally, particularly for the three crew members sitting in the rear?

If you're interested in Dutch Military Aviation, you may have hear of De Vliegende Hollander, the official magazine of the Royal Netherlands Air Force (KLu).

I have hundreds of issues that I've collected over the last 40 years. Before disposing of the collection, I went looking for a digital archive and was surprised by how little of the older material appeared to be available online. Rather than see these magazines disappear, I started scanning and preserving them myself.

I've uploaded close to 200 issues to the Internet Archive so far, and am roughly halfway through the project. My collection has coverage from the 1960s through the 2010s, until the magazine went online-only.

What makes the collection fascinating to me is that it documents far more than aircraft introductions. Across several decades it provides a first-hand view of how the Dutch Air Force evolved and saw itself at the time.

The magazines cover topics such as: introduction of major type (F-104, NF-5, F-16, helis, tankers, F-35), modernization programs and mid-life upgrades; training deployments (to Canada, the United States, Iceland and elsewhere), NATO exercises throughout the Cold War and beyond, operations in various theatres (Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan for instance), as well as base life, personnel stories and day-to-day service within the KLu.

In many ways they serve as a time capsule of Dutch military aviation history, Cold War NATO operations, and the changing priorities of the Royal Netherlands Air Force over more than half a century.

I've attached a few sample covers from different decades below.

The project is ongoing, and there are still hundreds more issues waiting to be scanned and uploaded. For those of you who are in checking it out: https://archive.org/details/@devliegendebrabander

slowly leaving 25R over R0 to Paris...only to turn around a little later and come back due to adverse winds ( june 11 2011 ) own content.

• Modelo: Lisunov Li-2 / Douglas C-47 (avión bimotor de hélice de la Segunda Guerra Mundial / posguerra).

• Ubicación de esta unidad: Región de Kaliningrado, cerca de Gúryevsk en Rusia.

• Estado: Se encuentra en estado de abandono expuesto a la intemperie tras haber sido retirado de un pedestal conmemorativo.

On Veterans Day, November 11th, 10 Good Men streams worldwide on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video. It is fantastic. It took the crew three years of constant work to find these heroes, interview them, and produce this film to tell their final stories. I will post the trailers here next week!

Sharing in case others here have an interest

www.aviationhistoricalstudies.org

On the dark battlefields of World War II, German soldiers feared an enemy they could barely see and rarely heard... until it was too late. Out of the blackness came a faint whooshing sound. Seconds later, bombs rained from the sky, buildings crumbled, and chaos erupted across the Eastern Front. On this episode of Weird History we take a look at the mysterious Night Witches: an elite squadron of all-female Soviet pilots who became one of the most feared forces of World War II. Flying outdated wooden biplanes on daring nighttime bombing missions, they terrorized German troops, earned countless military honors, and cemented their place among history's most legendary warriors. Have you ever heard of the Night Witches? Let us know in the comments.

(Much like real history, this video was produced entirely by human beings.)

Photo by Horst Faas

Short S.45 Solent G-AHIU Solway and G-AKNS City of Liverpool up for scrapping Hamworthy Beach, Poole Harbour, England .Circa 1959

Hey everyone,

I unintentionally stumbled into aviation history, while researching short snorters, but I've enjoyed my journey and taken to a bit of aviation history.

In the process, I've started looking for and collecting aviation magazines from the early and golden era (through the 1930s). I'm often looking for more. I tend to search many resources, including ebay, internet archive, hathitrust, worldcat, abebooks, general internet searches, some current publishers of magazines...i may have missed a couple more avenues. My main point is I try to be thorough.

If you happen to know any business, site, or person who has these types of magazines and is looking to sell please let me know.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate everyone's time.

Photo by Gilles Caron

The Me-163 flew mainly with Jagdgeschwader 400, with the first combat sorties in late July 1944 and operations until the end of the war.

Most sources cite around 300 combat sorties, with estimates ranging from about 250 to 370.

On August 24, 1944 Sergeant Siegfried Schubert shot down two B-17s. Further successes were recorded in September, and on October 6, the first Me 163B was lost during a mission. On April 16, 1945, JG 400 shot down a total of twelve enemy aircraft with Me 163s. Combat operations lasted from May 1944 to the spring of 1945. During this period, there were 16 confirmed kills compared to 14 Me 163s lost.

Considerably more aircraft and pilots were lost in accidents, such as during takeoff and landing, and from the highly toxic, explosive propellants.