Issue No 21 THE AVIATION HISTORIAN 3
Editor’s Letter
“IN THE GLORIOUS sunshine we found ourselves flying over
rolling pasture lands broken only by ranges of small hills, and I
am positive I saw two black lions.. .” Thus inter-war RAF pilot
Richard Shaw describes just one of the many adventures he
had during a (then) routine but (now) extraordinary 6,000-mile
round trip from the northern tip of Africa to its southernmost
state in 1934. Exotic flights around the big continent were a
regular occurrence for the RAF then, and the late Gp Capt
Shaw’s diary of a memorable trip from Cairo to Pretoria in a
Vickers Victoria gives us a wonderful flavour of the times, from
bathing in a freshwater pool in the shadow of Kilimanjaro to
circling through the mist rising from the majestic Victoria Falls
at Livingstone. I am greatly indebted to Gp Capt Shaw’s
daughter, Jilly McLaren, and her husband Ian, for giving us the
opportunity to share this beautifully written memoir, which
offers lyrical evidence of why the RAF enjoyed a much-envied
reputation at the time as “the greatest flying club in the world”.
Since Iran’s bloody revolution in 1979, very little of the
country’s aviation history has filtered through to the West;
author Babak Taghvaee is making great strides in changing
that, and his second feature for TAH details the history of the
Imperial Iranian Air Force’s Golden Crown formation aerobatic
display team, several members of which went on to be
executed by the new regime — a tragic and ill-deserved end
for some of the nation’s finest airmen.
We also round off our 60th anniversary coverage of the 1957
Defence White Paper with Chris Gibson’s look at its aftermath.
It’s a subject with far-reaching implications for what the UK
learned from it and what it would do next — something we
will be returning to in the very near future. Watch this space!The modern journal of classic aeroplanes and the history of flyingThe Aviation Historian
Published quarterly by: ®
The Aviation Historian
PO Box 962
Horsham RH12 9PP
United KingdomSubscribe at:
http://www.theaviationhistorian.comISSUE NUMBER 21
(published October 15, 2017)TM
EDITOR
Nick Stroud
e-mail [email protected]MANAGING EDITOR
Mick Oakey
e-mail [email protected]PRODUCTION MANAGER
Amanda StroudFINANCE MANAGER
Lynn OakeyFor all telephone enquiries:
tel +44 (0)7572 237737 (mobile number)EDITORIAL BOARD
Gregory Alegi, Dr David Baker, Ian Bott,
Robert Forsyth, Juanita Franzi, Dr Richard
P. Hallion, Philip Jarrett HonCRAeS,
Colin A. Owers, David H. Stringer,
Julian Temple, Capt Dacre WatsonWEBMASTER
David Siddall Multimedia
http://www.davidsiddall.comPrinted in the UK by
The Magazine Printing Company
using only paper from FSC/PEFC suppliers
http://www.magprint.co.ukPublished quarterly by The Aviation Historian,
PO Box 962, Horsham RH12 9PP, United Kingdom
© The Aviation Historian 2017
ISSN 2051-1930 (print)
ISSN 2051-7602 (digital)
While every care will be taken with material
submitted to The Aviation Historian, no responsibility
can be accepted for loss or damage. Opinions
expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect
those of the Editor. This periodical must not, without the
written consent of the publishers first being given, be
lent, sold, hired out or otherwise disposed of in a
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of trade or annexed or as part of any publication or
advertising literary or pictorial matter whatsoever.If you do not wish to keep your copy of
The Aviation Historian (impossible to imagine, we know),
please ensure you recycle it using an appropriate facility. FRONT COVER A typically vivid Charles E. Brown photo of a Vickers
Victoria loading up at Heliopolis in the 1930s; see Richard Shaw’s
memoir of flying the type in Africa (page 80).
BACK COVER An F-4C Phantom II of the 366th TFW, as used in
Operation Bolo (page 60), awaits another mission at Da Nang.MADE IN BRITAINPHILIP JARRETT COLLECTIONUSAF