William G. “Burl” Burlingame — author, historian and a veteran feature writer for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and its predecessor, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin — died Friday at his Kailua home. He was 66.

Burlingame had been a newspaperman for more than 35 years, most of them at the Star-Bulletin, where he was hired in 1979.

He was on the staff of what was called the Today section for three decades, with a particular focus on film criticism and music. However, he also covered a wide range of subjects, including his principal expertise in World War II history.

He left the paper in 2012 to work at the Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor, now called the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, holding posts as a research specialist, curator and historian.

Burlingame was born in Alaska, the son of the late William and Connie Burlingame. His father was a World War II fighter pilot, but he and his brothers spent much of their childhood in Hawaii when their father was assigned to Hickam Air Force Base and then retired here.

He was a graduate of Radford High School and the University of Missouri, where he majored in journalism and anthropology.

Burlingame was fascinated by wartime aviation history and became immersed in the finest details of the planes themselves, becoming a skilled model-plane hobbyist, first assembling commercial kits and ultimately designing his own.

Model-building was a passion he shared with many close friends, including Robert Chenoweth, a technician at the Hawaii Army Museum where Burlingame built a display of the Army’s wartime coastal defense searchlight system.

Chenoweth, a Vietnam helicopter gunner who had been shot down and was a prisoner for five years, said Burlingame understood the human casualties of war; his chronicles went far beyond the dry historical facts of aviation.

“Burl always, always understood the context that these things existed in,” Chenoweth said.

Just before his death, Burlingame had been working with Daniel Martinez, chief historian for the National Park Service, USS Arizona Memorial, on a model of the original marker for the Arizona, before the current memorial was built. Martinez said he’d see that it’s finished as a legacy.

“He really let the reel out in life,” Martinez said. “He was always up to something.

“He was innovative and burned the edge,” he added. “Everybody in their life hopes he can make a difference in the world, and he really did.”

He has won national awards for his model-­building and was active with the International Plastic Modellers’ Society. As a journalist, Burlingame won awards in entertainment reporting and page design from the Society of Professional Journalists.

Although he was best known as a writer, Burlingame also tapped his skills in photography, drawing and graphic arts in his independent works. That part of his career began right after college, writing, photographing and designing “Da Kine Sound: Conversations With People Who Create Hawaiian Music.”

He founded his own publishing company, Pacific Monograph, specializing in historic interpretation. He wrote numerous books on everything from Hawaii’s iconic collectible milk covers to Hawaiian music.

But the overwhelming majority of his titles concerned World War II history, including “Advance Force Pearl Harbor: The Imperial Navy’s Underwater Assault on America.”

The war was a subject on which he was interviewed for numerous TV and film productions. Among the most recent appearances was on PBS in 2010 for “Nova: Killer Subs in Pearl Harbor.” He also had credits in shows on the History Channel and Discovery Channel, as well as in various Japanese documentaries.

Burlingame is survived by wife Mary Poole-­Burlingame, daughters Amelia Briggs and Kate Burlingame, and brothers David and Dirk. Funeral arrangements are pending.