Declining quality of British aviation magazines

[AMC]

I agree completely with everything said. I stopped buying aviation magazines after the wonderful "RAF Flying" went to the wall (changed format) in the 60's.
I went on to buy books instead. "Bomber Pilot", "Pathfinder Cranswick", "No Moon Tonight", "Enemy Coast Ahead", "The Dam Busters", "The Ship Busters", "Ploesti", "The 1000 Plan", and more, all available in paperback in old second-hand bookshops..
Happy Days....

[Bombphoon]

1) The main reason why books and magazines 'ain't what they used to be' is mainly due to the internet - and forums such as these! In the pre-digital age, forum posts and information would be submitted to magazines as either letters or articles. This has dropped off dramatically.

2) The lack of this revenue means publishers' budgets are far smaller, so they can afford fewer staff, new articles and photos - and they pay the journalists far less, meaning there is less incentive to put pen to paper.

3) Perhaps most concerning - and it's something few people seem to have noticed or mentioned - the public interest in WW2 has dwindled massively in the last 10 years or so.

This, I think, is due to several reasons, from veterans and the post-war generation of readers dying out, to younger generations having no connection to WW2 and so are just not interested in it - or, more worryingly, history itself. The digital age encourages the younger generation to look forward, not back into history.

If you doubt what I say, look at how few WW2 documentaries there are on TV nowadays compared to a decade ago: it even used to be staple diet for the cable history channels - it isn't now. Also, look at the UK's main military history publisher: they used to publish overwhelmingly WW1 and WW2: look at their website now and many of their books are now about buses, murders, trains, politics and local history.

Perhaps our subject has been 'done to death'?

[sveahk]

Definitely agree with Jukka, I'm sorry to say - but anyone somewhat fluent in the german language has a couple of useful alternatives - at least compared with Aeroplane and FlyPast (magazines I stopped subscribing to a couple of years back - due to the reasons mentioned...).

Outstanding is the "FliegerRevue X" with long and deep probing articles by good authors about everything aeronautical, and not only german themes. Comes every second month which perhaps is one of the reasons they can serve us such high quality!

"Jet&Prop" also comes every second month, "Flugzeug Classic" and "Klassiker der Luftfart" monthly. All three still very readable with of course lots of Luftwaffe-related articles. Over the last couple of years all three are moving slightly in the glossy direction - but IMV a far cry from being unreadable...

Hans K