An enduring love affair with flying machines.

I have been in love with airplanes ever since I was a boy in the 1950s. My favourite childhood tin lithograph toys were a battery operated B-29 (or it could be its postwar successor, the B-50) superfortress bomber (made in Japan!) with flashing lights and engine sound, and a wind-up Sikorsky S-55 helicopter with whirling rotor. The B-29's single-piece wing assembly could be separated for compact storage. The chopper's rotor assembly was detachable, and foldable too. Amazingly, I could find images of these two brightly-lithographed toys online...

I also had this flying saucer (exactly as shown below!)...

Fast forward to today, I still follow aerospace developments. This one reported in ST (March 10) is mind-blowing cutting-edge...