happy merry festive...
Hope you have a happy holiday
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
Encore Kits, Oswald Boelke’s Alabatros D.II (Roden 1/32
The Albatros series of fighters were the most advanced fighters in the world at the time the D.I and D.II were introduced in 1916, setting the parameters for the next 20 years: two 30 caliber machine guns, a high speed, good [...]
Airfix 1/72 Supermarine Swift FR 5
In the years immediately following the Second World War, the pace of aircraft development slowed in Britain. In part, this was due to the fact that no immediate enemy was perceived, which is a natural reason for governments to slow the [...]
Hasegawa 1/48 F-86A Sabre
I did this Sabre back in 2003 and recently re-photographed it.
The Sabre almost didn't happen. Had the Air Force not been willing to delay the F-86 program while North American undertook to study the swept wing research done by [...]
Review: Fly 1/32 Arado Ar-234B-2
Of all the German jets, the Arado Ar 234 had the easiest transition and least change from prototype to operational aircraft. Once the decision was made to equip the airframe with a standard tricycle undercarriage, which required the [...]
Special Hobby 1/48 F-86K Sabre
The North American F 86D Sabre was a development of the basic F-86 Sabre that had so little commonality with previous sub-types that it was originally ordered as the YF-95. The designation was changed to F-86D in 1950, following the [...]
R.I.P. Edgar “Mr. Spitfire” Brooks
Edgar Brooks died of cancer yesterday. He was only diagnosed with it recently, when it was terminal. He went immediately into hospital,. and was gone within days. There's an argument to be made that was a blessing, but I'll argue [...]
Tamiya Swordfish II
George's very nice Swordfish on floats got me thinking about the Swordfish II I did a couple years back.
Most of the Swordfish produced during the Second World War were constructed by Blackburn Aviation, including all Swordfish Mks. II and [...]
1/48 Roden Fokker D.VIIf, Ltn zur See Gotthard Sachsenberg
In the fall of 1916, in answer to air raids conducted over the Flanders front by the Royal Naval Air Service, the German Navy combined two Kampfeinsizter Kommandos into Marine-Flieger Abteilung II, based at Neumuenster. The unit was [...]
Airfix 1/72 F4F-4 Wildcat
VF-9 was formed in the summer of 1942 to become the fighter squadron of the air group that would be assigned to the USS Essex (CV-9) then nearing construction completion. In September 1942, VF-9 was ordered aboard USS Ranger (CV-4) as a [...]
