War in the Air

It must have seemed like a great idea. To mark the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, Reed Publishing thought that a title looking back to the two great British aviation magazines of the era, 'Flight' and 'The Aeroplane', would be a pretty spiffing idea. They could select the most interesting pages out of the issues for each month of the war years and reprint them, together with a commentary looking backwards by the aviation journalist Bill Gunston, and invite readers to write in with their own perspectives on what happened and was written about events back then, fifty years on. How could this fail?

Well, it only lasted about 18 months. The trouble was that the photographic reproduction of the original material was terrible - both magazines only having access to 1930s standard photogravure, as well as only being able to publish official pictures from each side, often heavily retouched - and the journalism was stilted, reliant on each side's propaganda, and wholly reliant on the state of knowledge as it was at the time. And no amount of gazing backwards could make 1930s propaganda palatable for a late 20th century readership, used to a far higher standard of research and journalism. Later issues tried colour photographs on the cover, but to no avail.

It might have worked if it had been only an occasional publication, marking the anniversary of key dates and with the reprints interleaved with more modern content; but buying something quite drab that didn't stand up well against other newsstand offerings on similar subjects was, in retrospect, probably doomed to failure. The last issue appeared under the strapline, "For you, the war is over." A good try, but rather over-optimistic.… (mehr)