Description

Chris Gibson opens a new two-part article on the USAF’s Project Combat Bullseye of 1967, in which Strategic Air Command’s Convair B-58 Hustler nuclear bomber – the ultimate Cold War-era “big stick” – was evaluated as a “pathfinder” and conventional bomber for Tactical Air Command in Vietnam. The result of newly available access to previously unpublished archival material in the USA, Chris’s article casts new light on this little-known, if flawed and ultimately (perhaps unsurprisingly) impracticable concept.

If the value of a deterrent can be determined by how little it is used, the UK’s Avro Blue Steel air-launched nuclear stand-off missile can claim to be one of the nation’s most successful weapons, maintaining a precarious peace at the height of the Cold War without a single round ever having been launched in anger. The latest subject in our series on Britain’s aerial weapons featuring the superb technical illustrations of Ian Bott, Blue Steel was a remarkable technological achievement – an unmanned hypersonic self-guided aircraft capable of surviving the worst the Soviet Union’s air-defences could throw at it. As Chris Gibson, who provides the history of the missile, points out, it was a technological leap made by a development team which has historically received comparatively little credit. Indeed, detailed information about how the missile actually worked has been somewhat scarce over the years. As Ian Bott explains: “I don’t think Blue Steel has ever been tackled with this level of detail before. During more than eight months of research I went through around 1,000 pages of Blue Steel-related material to put these detailed diagrams together”.

Elsewhere in TAH48, Ralph Pegram concludes his two-part exploration of Edward Armstrong’s 1920s–40s endeavours to establish transatlantic air travel by means of “seadromes” built mid-ocean, which I described during discussions with Ralph as “just the sort of half-bonkers idea our readers love”. Judging by feedback received in the wake of Part One, it certainly seems to have captured your imagination!

Meanwhile Prof Keith Hayward FRAeS examines the political background to the Airbus A320 – a venture which single-handedly revived the fortunes of Britain’s aerospace industry, but which very nearly didn’t happen; Mariano Sciaroni recounts how Royal Navy Harriers met and fought Argentinian Mirages in the skies over the Falkland Islands in May 1982; Jean-Christophe Carbonel examines the bizarre life, work and death of French pioneer Henri Jourdan; and Maurice Wickstead opens a new history of Trans-Canada Air Lines.

All this – and much more – awaits you in Issue 48 of The Aviation Historian.