For a baby boomer brought up on the Biggles stories of Captain W E Johns, the opening pages of this classic memoir of World War aviation seem eerily familiar. Cecil Lewis and his schoolfriend decide to enlist in the RFC at the age of 16.
Under-funded and wracked by the hostility between political factions within its ranks, Spain’s military aviation was in a dire state in the period immediately before the Spanish Civil War. At this time, the air force was equipped with 60 Bréguet…
Since the late 1990s, the study of World War I has moved beyond the constraints of military history to embrace an increasingly multidisciplinary agenda. Not least in this has been the adoption and incorporation of anthropological and archaeological perspectives, focusing…
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Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
David Porter on Military History's doomed inventions.
Reviewing the best Military History Exhibitions with Ben Goodlad.
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REVIEW BY COLIN POMEROY Luck of the Draw, which has just been adapted by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks into the new television series Masters of the Air, is in effect the autobiography of the late Frank Murphy. It tells…
REVIEW BY COLIN POMEROY With The Women Behind the Few, Sarah-Louise Miller has produced a truly excellent book telling the story of women in multiple roles during the Second World War. The book actually begins with the Great War, with…
John Lock resumes his series on the ‘Butterfly Effect’. Last time (MHM June/July 2021) he assessed the possible impact of Stonewall Jackson’s accidental shooting at the Battle of Chancellorsville. This time, equally controversially, he turns his attention to the Battle of Britain.
In this image, Wing Commander Guy Gibson can be seen sitting in field of poppies at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire in July 1943. It was from this airbase that Gibson led 617 Squadron to carry out Operation Chastise, more commonly…
In the last year of WWI, airpower became a major factor – so much so that the British turned their air contingents, previously treated as adjuncts of the Army or the Navy into a unified RAF. Was the diversion of resources worth it?
Taylor Downing reviews a classic war movie.
Neil Faulkner begins a short series on the history of airpower and its impact on the evolution of modern warfare.