This is a story of two worlds. One, a world of isolation for a tiny farming community in Québec during the Second World War; the other, a world of global communications and social networking employed to solve a mystery which involved the first world…

In the black of night of 8 June 1944, two days after the D-Day invasions of Normandy, the dark hulk of a four-engined Lancaster bomber of 15 Squadron, Royal Air Force, trailing a blow-torching curtain of livid flame, lurches heavily…

La dernière fois que nous avons vu notre ami dans La guerre selon Donald Lambie Épisode 2, il était en route pour Bellaria depuis un centre de transit du personnel dans le sud de l’Italie, après avoir terminé un bref cours de remise à niveau pour pilote de Spitfire à Guado, en Italie.

For most young testosterone-fueled, newly-winged pilots of the Second World War, being a fighter pilot was the plum assignment, the glory job, the best of the best - a fighting man with the fastest and the…

n what could easily be the finest and boldest example of death-defying and cheeky nose-thumbing during the Second World War or any conflict for that matter, bomber and intruder crews of the Royal Air Force …

Some time in 1942, a lone Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk bearing the 260 Squadron “HS” squadron code and the aircraft letter “B” settled down over a wide and remote expanse of North African sand desert called Al Wadi al Jadid…

Harry Hannah, is a friend of mine. He was a Spitfire pilot flying for 602 City of Glasgow Squadron, one of the most vaunted and storied fighter squadrons of the Second World War. Some of the greatest and most highly decorated aces…

Leaning against the merchantman’s railing near the aft 4-inch gun emplacement, 23 year-old Sergeant Pilot Calvin Taylor and his travel mate were taking in the late spring ocean air and enjoying the sea voyage to Gibraltar…

Vintage Wings of Canada's core program called In His Name dedicates each of the eighteen aircraft of the collection to a Canadian veteran, famous or otherwise, native or foreign born, who had an association with …

It began on 29 June 1962, as I stood before the main gates to the entrance of the Canadian Army's Currie Barracks, in Calgary, Alberta. To the guard, I uttered the simple words "I want to join the Canadian Army…

When I was eleven years old, there existed a holiday in my hometown that, for me, rivaled Christmas or Halloween or Firecracker Day, which is what we called Victoria Day. This holiday, this special day…

There are places in this world that are imbued with a spiritual power beyond their utility. Most are grand. Westminster Abbey for instance contains the…

Despite researching material over the past five years for the nearly three hundred stories, albums, features and missives of Vintage News, I am still in awe of the historical, emotional and visual matrix that is…

The Alberta landscape is one of undulating and verdant beauty in the spring. To the west, on the distant horizon, stands the saw-toothed, snow-capped permanence of…

The Canadian North is not for everyone. With its hard winters and boondocks spirit, it is a place that can easily break a soft, city-dwelling, smart-phone addicted metrosexual. It is however a place that pulls …

Here in the United Kingdom, it has been raining for months now, after a long, dry winter. It is almost as if tears are falling in remembrance….

The internet changed everything. It certainly changed me. I have been writing stories about aviation history for about nine years now. It is not something I thought I would ever do, but by my estimation I am beyond 2.5 million words at the time of this writing.

When I was a child, we lived at the very edge of the city, the outermost ripple of the postwar suburban tract home malaise. We lived in a sweetly named, Mayberry-esque development called Elmvale Acres, a former farmer's hay field,…

Vintage Wings of Canada dedicates all of its aircraft to famous and no-so-famous Canadian airmen whose lives are inextricably connected to the aircraft types which bear their dedication panels. One particular aircraft,…

The Second World War was a time of powerful stresses on nations, on ethnicities, on families, and on economies around the globe. Hundreds of thousands of families, in every corner of the world, would offer up, …