Aircraft

To read about all the hundreds of aircraft in the Biggles books is to take a grand tour through the story of aviation from the earliest years to the jet age. But it can also be a frustrating experience. W. E. Johns isn't always as precise as he could be. Sometimes he is vague about the aircraft type when he could be more specific. Sometimes he is specific when he doesn't have to be--why call a Vandal a Vickers when Vickers produced no such aircraft? Sometimes he uses a fictitious aircraft when there is a real aircraft type which is perfectly suitable. At other times he uses a real aircraft which is plainly unsuitable or whose performance figures just cannot do what he says it does in the book.