THE WARBIRD'S FORUM

Gary Price works in Shanghai, and on a visit to Guizhou recently came across a remarkable mock-up of Chuck Older's Tomahawk, fuselage number 68. It's not the real thing, but it certainly appears to be an actual P-40B, to judge by the cowling machine gun mounts and the small air scoop. See it here.

Notes from two books of interest to students of the Second World War and the Cold War that grew out of it: George Kennan: An American Life, by the preeminent Cold War historian John Gaddis, is a magnificent book about the author of the "containment" strategy. And The Polish Deportees of World War II: Recollections of Removal to the Soviet Union and Dispersal Throughout the World, edited by Tadeusz Piotrowski.

For several years I have maintained a list of the westerners who were held captive on the Japanese island-garrison of Rabaul, updating it from time to time as new information trickled in. Here's an email with an account of the crash of the B-17 "Reckless Mountain Boy" on New Ireland, before the survivors were transferred to the hell-hole of Rabaul.

I first took the controls of a Piper Cub in January 1998, and over the next thirteen years had a glorious time flying around New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine, with excursions also to Arizona ("unusual attitudes" at Chandler flight school near Phoenix), Pennsylvania (the annual Sentimental Journey to Lock Haven, where Cubs were built), and New Jersey (flying low and slow in a bush-flying school). Last fall I decided to ground myself, and I have celebrated my love affair with the Cub and taildraggers generally by collecting the essays I wrote during that time, in an ebook for Amazon's Kindle reader. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford