It's the publishers who insist on the Spitfire covers, Doug, not the editors. On Aeroplane in the IPC days we could reckon on selling an extra 2,000 copies in the UK newstrade if we had a Spitfire on the cover. This naturally meant that the publisher wanted a Spifire on every cover, and equally naturally meant that we editorial bods had to mount a spirited defence! Actually towards the end I used to have to provide a list of the next 12 planned covers, so I would always include a "sacrificial lamb" or two among them in order to draw focus from interesting cover subjects that I wanted to protect. Ridiculous, really. But re The Aviation Historian, amen to that! (Although I may be biased!)