John William Ransom Taylor, OBE Hon DEng

FRAeS The Royal Aeronautical Society, also known as the RAeS, is a British multi-disciplinary professional institution dedicated to the global aerospace community. Founded in 1866, it is the oldest aeronautical society in the world. Members, Fellows ...

FRHistS The Royal Historical Society, founded in 1868, is a learned society of the United Kingdom which advances scholarly studies of history. Origins The society was founded and received its royal charter in 1868. Until 1872 it was known as the Histori ...

AFIAA, (8 June 1922 – 12 December 1999) was a British aviation expert and editor. He edited '' Jane's All the World's Aircraft'' for three decades during the Cold War. He retired as editor in 1989, just as the

Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its ...

obscuring the Soviet Bloc's technology started to lift. Taylor, who lived to the age of 77, was a master of a parallel art to

Kremlinology Kremlinology is the study and analysis of the politics and policies of the Soviet Union while Sovietology is the study of politics and policies of both the Soviet Union and former communist states more generally. These two terms were synonymous un ...

, he could deduce the performance of

Soviet military The Soviet Armed Forces, the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union and as the Red Army (, Вооружённые Силы Советского Союза), were the armed forces of the Russian SFSR (1917–1922), the Soviet Union (1922–1991), and th ...

equipment from blurred photographs. "Thus in 1961, when Western intelligence was fascinated by early glimpses of a new Soviet bomber, the

Tupolev Tu-22 The Tupolev Tu-22 (NATO reporting name: Blinder) was the first supersonic bomber to enter production in the Soviet Union. Manufactured by Tupolev, the Tu-22 entered service with the Soviet military in the 1960s. The aircraft was a disappointm ...

, many analysts estimated it could reach a speed of Mach 2.5 - more than twice the

speed of sound The speed of sound is the distance travelled per unit of time by a sound wave as it propagates through an elastic medium. At , the speed of sound in air is about , or one kilometre in or one mile in . It depends strongly on temperature as we ...

. But Taylor, after noting the shape of the aircraft's engine intakes, put the maximum at no more than Mach 1.4, which proved much closer to the truth. In 1983, he analysed the

MiG-29 The Mikoyan MiG-29 (russian: Микоян МиГ-29; NATO reporting name: Fulcrum) is a twin-engine fighter aircraft designed in the Soviet Union. Developed by the Mikoyan design bureau as an air superiority fighter during the 1970s, the Mi ...

fighter, whose agility was the cause of much anxiety amongst NATO's war-gamers; seven years later, when Jane's was able to check his suggested measurements, they were found to be accurate to within an inch. "

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

, Tuesday 25 January 2000. Taylor was educated at

Ely Cathedral Ely Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, is an Anglican cathedral in the city of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. The cathedral has its origins in AD 672 when St Etheldreda built an abbey church. The present ...

Choir School ( King's School, Ely) and

Soham Soham ( ) is a town and civil parish in the district of East Cambridgeshire, in Cambridgeshire, England, just off the A142 between Ely and Newmarket. Its population was 10,860 at the 2011 census. History Archaeology The region between De ...

Grammar School A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to t ...

. He trained as a draughtsman and joined

Hawker Aircraft Hawker Aircraft Limited was a British aircraft manufacturer that was responsible for some of the most famous products in British aviation history. History Hawker had its roots in the aftermath of the First World War, which resulted in the bank ...

in 1941. There he worked on the development of the Hurricane fighter and its successors. His specialisation was rectifying design defects. He joined Jane's as editorial assistant on Jane's All the World's Aircraft in 1955 and four years later he took over as editor. Until the late 1960s he edited this volume with virtually no editorial support but his love of aviation was such that this was a challenge he enjoyed. He provided a regular monthly aviation feature in Meccano Magazine throughout the 1940s-1960s.

Works

Books

(partial list) * '' Jane's All the World's Aircraft (Editor, 30 years)'' * ''Civil Aircraft of the World,''(with Gordon Swanborough) 1972 and 1974,

Charles Scribner's Sons Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing American authors including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan R ...

, New York * ''Combat Aircraft of the World,'' 1969 Paragon, U.K.; 1979 G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York. * ''Helicopters of the World,'' (with Michael J.H. Taylor) 1978,

, New York * ''Aircraft, Aircraft!''

References

External links

Jane's All the World's Aircraft Editors

{{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, John W. R. 1922 births 1999 deaths English editors Aviation writers Aviation historians British aviation historians British historians Intelligence analysts People from Cambridgeshire Fellows of the Royal Historical Society Officers of the Order of the British Empire

See also

Works

Books

References

External links