Born: 21.05.1946 Nationality: Dutch Flying experience: gliders only; more than 1100 starts or 215 hours since 1991 on the following types: two-seaters: Schleicher ASK-13, Schleicher ASK-21, Grob Twin Astir Single seaters: Schleicher K-8c, PZL-Bielsko SZD-51-1 Junior, Rolladen-Schneider LS-4b, Pilatus B4-PC-11, Schleicher ASK-23 Interest: aircraft built as prototype or in small numbers only Photos: more than 10,000 world-wide covering the period 1930 up to now Archive: technical info and 3-view drawings on most types; more than 850 books on aviation.

Designed by a team headed by Pierre Satre, the Sud Est Caravelle was one of the most innovative and original jetliners of the fifties. With a nose section resembling that of the De Havilland Comet* it had the unique feature of engines mounted in pods at the rear end on each side of the fuselage. [...]

The Coventry Ordnance Works (C.O.W.) designed and built in 1915 a small 37 mm cannon capable of firing a 1 pound, and then later 1.5 pound high-explosive shell. Vickers had acquired in the early twenties the rights for this gun and after a proposal to the Air Staff a specification was issued to develop a [...]

In the mid-fifties the British aircraft industry produced a number of operational jet fighters with trans-sonic capabilities like the Hawker Hunter, Gloster Javelin, De Havilland Sea-Vixen and the Vickers-Supermarine Scimitar. During this time, a new generation of supersonic fighters and fighter-bombers was being developed with a number of various prototypes in [...]

This article gives an overview of the most important and significant flying boats and amphibians developed and built by the French aircraft industry. In fact France more or less ‘invented’ the flying boat with the Fabre Hydravion which was flown for the first time on 28 March 1910 from the harbour of [...]

The period 1950-1960 was an extremely interesting period for French jet fighter development. With jet fighters in production that could barely exceed the speed of sound in a dive like the Dassault Mystère, it was also the period that saw the birth of a new generation of radical fighter designs capable [...]

When Germany capitulated in May 1945 and German troops left the Netherlands, there was not much left of the national aircraft industry. The Fokker works at Amsterdam-Noord were practically destroyed and any equipment still left was looted by the retreating German forces. Also the Fokker workshop at Schiphol-Airport was practically non-existing by that time. Much [...]