Baby Flattops of the Royal Navy’s Ruler Class
While the big fleet carries all the glory, the Royal Navy’s carriers did yoeman service protecting convoys, fighting enemy in the Atlantic and Pacific Theatres, ferrying aircraft, and repatriating servicemen and prisoners of war…
PADDLE WHEEL FLATTOPS OF THE GREAT LAKES
Whenever I picture in my mind the great coming of age of the aircraft carrier, I think of the gargantuan fleet carriers of the US Navy in the Second World War—rust streaked, heaving in cold grey seas, driving through heavy swells under…
BLIND FAITH
On September 23, 1953, a little remembered but near-tragic incident took place on the high seas. As one of the 42 pilots involved in this terrifying event, it remains strong in my memory. ..
MAGNIFICENT MOMENTS
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Canadian Navy, the progenitor of the modern Canadian Navy. Throughout 2010, Vintage Wings of Canada will join our brothers-on-the-sea…
REVENGE OF THE SHANG
It’s Christmas Eve and though just early evening, the dim light of winter is long receded, replaced by the orange vapour darkness of an urban night. Outside my house a Canadian hibernal front descends
BODY ENGLISH — The Science and the Art of the LSO
You are standing at the very edge of a steel cliff, high above the Indian Ocean. You look backwards across a hot steel deck shimmering in the 100ºF heat to the vast expanse of pale white-blue ocean….
THE MIRACULOUS TORPEDO SQUADRON
Mori Juzo was a torpedo bomber pilot of the Imperial Japanese Navy and one of the aviators who participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. In 1973, Juzo wrote his autobiography…
FASCIST FLATTOPS
Somewhere 55 kilometres off the coast of Poland, beneath the dark, cold waters of the Baltic Sea, lies the colossal ghost of a haughty dream of world dominance…