Comments and corrections are welcome.
Marcia Cummings Hubbard, MA - Founder and Senior Editor
Editors and Contributors:
Paul Jackson, Editor in Chief (Ret.), Jane's All the World's Aircraft
Having, by chance, received his first aircraft book at the age of six, Paul Jackson had become an avid enthusiast of all things aeronautical by the time he began a technical grammar school education in Hull, England. Before the end of his ’teens, he had helped to found a local aviation society and become editor of its monthly magazine; had his first historical research published; and contributed to the definitive history of Blackburn Aircraft.
He wrote for amateur and professional journals – on both historical and current matters — for a further decade before becoming a full-time, freelance, aerospace photo-journalist and book author in 1979. During this time, he was the compiler of the World Air Forces Directory issued by Aviation Advisory Services; wrote for numerous periodicals, part-works and encyclopaedias; was news editor of Aviation News; regularly contributed to the RAF Yearbook; authored books for Ian Allan and Midland Counties Publications; and began a four-decade association with what became Aviation Week Group’s Show News.
In 1987, he was invited to join the five-strong compiling team of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, being appointed its editor-in-chief in 1995. Simultaneously, he was founder editor of Jane’s World Air Forces. During both appointments at Jane’s, he further developed his previously-learned skills of technical appraisal; diligent research and analysis of open-source data; and of finding the truth concealed behind the misleading press releases and exaggerated brochures issued by some aircraft manufacturers and governments.
This natural skepticism led to unanticipated notoriety after 2013 when he turned his attention to the glaring disparities in the Wright Brothers’ accounts of their claimed invention of the airplane. The international furore thus generated become a distraction to Jane’s main business and prompted the company to request his historical researches be conducted anonymously. This embargo remained in force until 2019, when he retired from Jane’s employ after 32 years and resigned his Fellowship of the Royal Aeronautical Society. He now lives in semi-retirement, working on less demanding editing tasks.
1 comment:
Your website is an important contribution to correcting aviation history. A good starting point for anyone truly interested in the beginnings of aviation is Unlocking the Sky by Seth Shulman. While it is an unabashedly pro-Curtis, anti-Wright book, it shows that there are two sides to the story. The Wrights' intensely litigious and secretive approach to development from 1903 to 1908 was glossed over in every written account of their work until the Centennial of Flight drew attention to the limitations of the original Flyer. It is high time that record is set straight. The Wrights deserve credit only for what they actually did. No one who believes they built a true airplane in 1903 should be afraid of research into that accomplishment.
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