Aviation Quarterly

By Dick DuRose October 8, 2022

A few months ago, I bid on and won a box of airplane books in an online estate sale.  It’s taken me until now to look through them. 

Among the boxful were four copies of a hardcover book called Aviation Quarterly. They are bound like a book, but the contents are similar to a magazine without advertising. I was unaware of this series until looking through the box.  The books I have are Volume 1, Numbers 1-4.  This was the first year for the series.  I looked on eBay and note there were several more years (at least eight) after the first year which was1974.

The books were sold annually in sets of four.  Each set was given a serial number, mine is number 0473.  I am guessing that means there were at least 473 sets sold that year.

The stories told in the first edition are original and interesting.  Writing style is breezy.  And pictures and drawings are plentiful.  Apparently, the books lasted until 1982 or so.  How and why publishing stopped is unknown to me.  Could be enthusiasm by the publisher waned due to a lack of time or money.  Probably the latter.

There is one story in the first-year edition about a flight in 1927, which is also recounted in my book, 1927.  The article titled, Columbia gem of the ocean, is about the flight by Clarence Chamberlin and Charles Levine from Roosevelt Field on Long Island ending in Germany three thousand seven hundred and eleven miles, even further than Lindbergh’s flight by two hundred and ninety miles.  Their plane was a Bellanca named, Columbia.  Bad weather kept them from finding Berlin, but they flew far enough.  Their goal was to exceed Lindbergh’s distance and they did. The plane was damaged as it ground looped to avoid a fence in the wheat field in which they landed.  Because of the weather, they could not find the Berlin airfield.

The story is based on an interview with Clarence Chamberlin.  He died shortly after the question-and-answer session with the author. In the article, Chamberlin explains that he quickly returned to New York by ship after the flight, although Levine, the owner, offered him a chance to pilot the plane back to the States if Chamberlin waited for the repairs to be completed.  When asked, Chamberlin said, “I knew only too well what a hazardous thing a trans-Atlantic flight in a single-motored plane is and did not care to ride my luck too hard in attempting to fly back.”  

The Columbia never made it back to the States as Levine became embroiled in several legal disputes.  Later in its storied history the plane was sold and changed its name to Maple Leaf and made the flight back and forth between the States and Europe a couple times.

The article in Aviation Quarterly is short and succinct and filled with photos.  It is an interesting read. If anyone has stories about the periodical named Aviation Quarterly, I would be happy to hear from you.