Past Issues

Volume 7, Number 3 - 3rd Quarter 2006

LOGBOOK is a quarterly magazine covering the entire spectrum of aviation history, from the first flight to just yesterday. Civil, Military, Airline, General Aviation - We bring you the stories that have rarely or never been published before, told by the people who lived them. If the story is known, we dig to find additional information, documents and photographs to add to the knowledge about the topic. Short stories, sea stories, personal remembrances, in-depth information and simple hangar flying are the kind of unique aviation history you will find in the pages of LOGBOOK.

Back Issue: Available

Night Owl Shooter

The New Guy gets a quick indoctrination during a night dive-bombing mission over the trackless jungles of Southeast Asia.

Captain Val Johnson was a young Air Force Phantom Driver back when the war in Southeast Asia was just getting started. In this story he recounts his first mission flying combat – a night mission using dive-bombing techniques under flares. Needless to say, the pucker factor was quite high to begin with, but throw in a hazy night with low visibility, some vertigo and some anti-aircraft fire, and you have all the makings of a hair raising tale.

Missing in Alaska

As a category, it is perhaps the strangest of all aviation mysteries. A seemingly capable aircraft, flown by a competent, highly trained crew, simply vanishes. Even in today’s modern world of GPS, search and rescue satellites and long range communications, airplanes still vanish without a trace.

Back in December 1967, a U.S. Navy Lockheed SP-2H Neptune was lost on a routine flight originating in Alaska. Everything was going just fine. There was even a civil airliner on the same route, only minutes behind, that made it without any problems. The Neptune was never heard from again.
Author Gregory Liefer investigates the disappearance and lets the reader know if the aircraft ever was found.

Glenn Curtiss - The Canadian Connection

It was the very earliest days of aviation. So early that on one of Glenn Curtiss’ first flights he stated that he could have flown longer but that would have required a turn. The date was the Fourth of July 1908.
Glenn Curtiss, one of the acknowledged pioneers in aviation, actually got much of his initial experience with what was called the Aviation Experiment Association (AEA).

Author Herb Kugel chronicles the brief but very production days of the AEA, which was championed by Alexander Graham and Mabel Bell, and included Curtiss, Canadians Casey Baldwin and John McCurdy, and U.S. Army Officer Thomas Selfridge.