Welcome to my aviation history page. It had not been seriously updated for many years, but the need to change my hosting platform did oblige me to make some updates. I am trying to keep it simple, but that my amateurish use of HTML and CSS has gone out of the window is probably a good thing!
For now, it is work in progress, as I slowly edit and transfer content. So you will find a lot of gaps on this site, and missing links.

World War II
Development of Aircraft Guns, Ammunition and Installations 1933-45
Anthony G. Williams and Emmanuel Gustin

World War I
Development of Aircraft Guns, Ammunition and Installations 1914-32
Anthony G. Williams and Emmanuel Gustin

The Modern Era
Development of Aircraft Guns, Ammunition and Installations since 1945
Anthony G. Williams and Emmanuel Gustin
The Flying Guns series once began with the message that I would welcome a lot of work: It was, and we wrote three books instead of one. They were published by Crowood Press from 2003 onwards. Many works on the history of military aviation turn a blind eye to the real purpose of these machines, focusing on their often brilliant engineering, and ignoring that they were built to kill and destroy. Yet that was their purpose, which they too often accomplished with blind lack of selectivity, but also at times failed to achieve. We aimed to set the record straight by focusing, as it were, on the business end. Since publication of these books a fair amount of research was done by professional historians (which I am not) but I hope they remain a good starting point.
The books were preceded by a set of web pages that were created as a short history of aircraft armament. It is a quick and very simplified overview, but I hope that it is of some interest.
Also hosted here are a series of pages that I created on specific topics, just because I had some interest in them, because I came across interesting source material, or perhaps just because I wanted to argue a point:
- Twin-engined fighters (of WWII)
- Light fighters of WWII
- Armour of the Air
- Aircraft Designation Systems (to be done)
- The Avro Arrow
- BAC TSR.2
- Medium Bombers of World War II (work in progress, chapter 1)