Let Let Let – Warplanes

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.

After the end of the Second World War the Dutch Marineluchtvaartdienst (MLD) had on its inventory the Consolidated Vultee PBY-5 Catalina amphibious flying boat. For a possible replacement for this ageing type, Claudius Dornier was contacted by MLD at his Madrid office. Here he had a small team available for design and consultancy work. The [...]

Last week, on 22 October 2009 the first batch of the Fokker S-14 book finally arrived at the publisher’s office at Maarssen. First book sales took place on Saturday 24 October during the large IPMS Euro Scaling event at Nieuwegein. The book is the result of almost 3 years of intensive research both by me [...]

Supermarine Aviation Works Ltd. at Southampton, England was always a company well known for its flying boat  and floatplane designs. This started already in 1914 wit a flying boat designed by Noel Pemberton Billing.  Supermarine became famous with its flying boat and floatplane racers that were built purposely for the Schneider Cup races. In the [...]

The Italian aircraft manufacturers have a long history that goes back to the dawn of manned flight. Many pioneers like Caproni, the automobile manufacturer Fiat, railway car and ship-building company Piaggio and the company Savoia-Marchetti became well-known and established names in aviation history. The Italian aircraft builders have constructed a very large number if [...]

To celebrate the fact that 75 years ago the famous McRobertson race from London to Australia was held, the Aviodrome Theme Park Museum had organized in the weekend of 4-5 July (2009) a Fly-in of aircraft from that period. Aviodrome tried to get as many aircraft types as possible to this event that had participated [...]

The famous Paris Airshow at Le Bourget celebrated this year (1909) its 100th anniversary. It was important enough for president Sarkozy to visit the airshow on Saturday 20 June, the first day of the public airshow. However, also this show was affected by the international financial crisis and there was very little news. Only new [...]

In 1936 a French racing plane, the Caudron C-460 Rafale won both the Greve and the Thompson Trophy race in the United States flown by the famous French pilot Michel Detroyet. To commemorate this Tom Wathen and Mark Lindsey from AeroCraftsman constructed a beautiful flying replica of this famous racer. The replica is powered by [...]

Number sixteen of the SAM monograph publications is on one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built: the Hawker Hunter. Just like the other volumes, this book is fully packed with photos (and a lot of them in colour!), colour profiles and technical drawings from the Hunter manual. In almost 130 pages, the following chapters [...]

LetLetLet Warplanes has come into the possession of some 250 photos from the collection of the Dutch Royal Netherlands Aeronautical Society ‘KNVvL’. Photos were used by the editorial staff of the KNVvL ‘house’-magazine VLIEGWERELD, later AVIA-VLIEGWERELD, for publiation in these magazines. Although all photos on Dutch aviation from this collection are elsewhere, and although [...]