The latest issue in the Aviation Archive series highlights a selection of the eight best US fighters of World War Two. It looks beyond ‘pilot prejudice’ and discounts the received wisdom of generations of armchair enthusiasts to draw upon the more measured reports of test pilots.

Although the bomber campaigns against Germany and Japan were arguably what ‘won the war for the allies’, bombers could not have carried out their mission without fighters. Fighters escorted bombers to their targets. Fighters softened up defences on the way to the targets. Fighters tied up the enemy’s defences.

Issue 58 looks at the best fighters used by the USAAF and the US Navy and Marine Corps during the conflict, and tries to assess their importance and merits, presenting them in pairs with contemporary cutaway artwork, lavish colour and black and white images from the Key archive.