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According to my mother, the first word I said was "airplane" ("oh-pane") at around 11 months of age when a P-38 flew over the park we were in. I've had a love affair with airplanes and the people who are involved with airplanes ever since, which has become my career as an aviation historian and author.

I built my first model, a Strombecker all-wood P-80 (that dates me!) at age 6, after watching my father build other wood models for me. I quickly graduated to plastic models when I found Mr. Twist's Fix-It Shop on South Gaylord Street in Denver, with its corner shelves full of wondrous kit boxes. I built my first biplane (a Hawk Models Nieuport 17 - still available from Testors) before I was old enough to know that "biplanes are hard." With time out in the 1960s after graduating from high school for the Navy and college and "The Sixties" I returned to the hobby in 1970 and haven't left since.

I became a screenwriter in Hollywood in the 1980s, after first getting published as an aviation author in the 1970s in Air Enthusiast Quarterly. I love the fact that William Green, who wrote the first "serious aviation book" (All The World's Aircraft 1954) that I got my father to buy for me was the first person to publish me. I've flown the back seat of an F-4E Phantom for an article on the Wild Weasels in Air Force Magazine, and had 20 minutes stick time in Jim Nissen's 1918 Curtiss JN-4D Jenny back in 1979 for an article in Plane and Pilot, and been in everything in between over the past 47 years. When I worked in politics in Sacramento during the 1970s, I was a member of a club that flew Stearman N747JR (we called ourselves in as "Boeing 747 Junior") and got around 100 hours in that fun machine.

I'm one of the original members here of iModeler, and consider it the best model club on the planet.

Author of "Fabled Fifteen: The Pacific War Odyssey of Carrier Air Group 15", "Pacific Thunder: the Pacific War from Wake island to Leyte Gulf," "Tidal Wave: From Leyte Gulf to Tokyo Bay," "The Frozen Chosen: The First Marine Division and the Battle of Chosin Reservoir," "Holding The Line: the Naval Air Campaign in Korea," and "MiG Alley: The US Air Force in Korea - 1950-53" which will be released on November 26.

My most recent book, "Clean Sweep: VIII Fighter Command Against the Luftwaffe 1942-45" will be published by Osprey on May 23.

My wife of 27 years finally escaped Parkinson's on February 20 and sailed west to the unknown land beyond the sunset where she once again paints seascapes with her friends, her cats.

You can order all of them here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Thomas+McKelvey+Cleaver&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

Getting Skyraiders right

One of the big problems for modelers building A-1 Skyraiders is that most of the time the model is under-weathered. A friend of mine who flew Skyraiders in Vietnam once told me that the major problem he had with most of the Skyraider [...]

Monogram F9F-5 and F9F-5P Panthers

Monogram's Panther first appeared in 1990, the first 1/48 F9F in close to 35-40 years past the Aurora and Hawk kits. At the time, it was the best and most accurate kit of the Panther, and it is still the most accurate (and in my mind, the [...]

Tommy McGuire's last "Pudgy"

The Trumpeter P-38L done OOB with seatbelts, and Eagle Cals decals. (Last of thre P-38s for now, though there are two 1/48 kits in the stash) On Jan. 7, 1945, Tommy McGuire led a flight of four planes on an early morning fighter sweep over [...]

Tom McGuire’s P-38H

Trumpeter P-38 with Jerry Rutman's early P-38 conversion set. Had a friend up-size 1/48 personal markings to 1/32 for this. Hard to believe I did this 13 years ago, but there you go... Thomas Buchanan "Tommy" McGuire, Jr., was [...]

F-5E Photo Lightning

Trumpeter 1/32 P-38L with Jerry Rutman's resin F-5E conversion. Here's the best story I know about a photo-Lightning mission: The Loire River Death Ride of “Chili” Childress: One of the most hair‑raising missions ever flown by the [...]

P-38 walkaround

Some photos taken 10+ years ago out at Planes of Fame of a P-38L in NMF. My mother always claimed that the first word I said was "airplane!" (opane!) as I pointed up at a P-38 flying over the park we were in. So my love affair [...]

OMG! Airfix announces 1/48 Blenheim IF for 2018!

(link) To further ensure scale modelling immortality for this magnificent aircraft, we are excited to bring Workbench readers the exclusive news that a newly tooled example of the Bristol Blenheim Mk.IF will be taking its place in our ever [...]

RIP John Alcorn

Noted scratchbuilt modeler John Alcorn died this past Sunday of complications of Alzheimers and congestive heart failure. I first met John 45 years ago, when he walked into a meeting of Golden Gate IPMS in Berkeley, California, at the [...]

PBJ Walkaround

This is the last actual PBJ-1J (delivered as such from the North American factory) still in existence, now operated in flying condition by the CAF SOCAL Wing out at Camarillo Airport here in S.Calif. after a 23 year restoration.

Dunkirk – see it!

Go see Dunkirk. A cinematic masterpiece. Truly a work of art. My screenwriting partner and I walked out just blown away by the thought a mind could conceive it and then carry it out. The slicing and dicing of the timeline is pure genius - [...]