History & Legends, Military Aviation
On a May morning in 1957, over the Pacific near Christmas Island, a Vickers Valiant called XD818 opened its bomb bay and released a device that fell away, dropped for long seconds, and then turned the sky white. Britain had just become a thermonuclear power — and it...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Walk up to the Dornier Do 335 and something looks wrong. There is a propeller on the nose, as expected — and then a second propeller on the tail, spinning behind the fin. The Germans called it the Pfeil, the Arrow. It was the fastest piston-engined fighter the Third...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
In March 2026, a silver jet with a wickedly swept wing thundered down a runway near Houston and hauled itself into the Texas sky. It was a North American F-100 Super Sabre — one of only two left flying anywhere on earth — and its return is a good excuse to remember an...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
In the late 1930s, Bell Aircraft set out to build a fighter so ambitious that it needed gunners riding inside the engines. The result, the Bell YFM-1 Airacuda, was sleek, futuristic, bristling with cannon — and one of the most gloriously misguided warplanes the United...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
France, the late 1950s. At SNECMA, engineers were building an aircraft with no wings you would recognise — no long span, no tail as anyone knew it, just a jet engine wrapped inside a great metal ring, designed to stand on its tail and rise straight into the sky. They...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Look at almost any jet airliner and the engines are in one of two places: slung under the wings, or bolted to the tail. Now look at the VFW-614. Its two engines sit on pylons on top of the wings — a layout almost no other airliner in history has ever used. It was West...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Long before anyone talked about “loyal wingman” drones flying off crewed jets, the Soviet Union built the real thing: a flying aircraft carrier. A single giant bomber would haul as many as five fighters into the sky, cut them loose in mid-air — and, in its combat...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On a spring morning in May 2026, a big blue Grumman Avenger lifted off over Hamilton, Ontario, and climbed into the sky for the first time in decades. In the cockpit was pilot James Bradley. Watching from the ground was a small group of people who had spent seventeen...
Aviation World, History & Legends
On the morning of 7 August 1919, Parisians near the Champs-Élysées heard an engine where there should have been none. They looked up to see a Nieuport fighter dropping toward the great arch at the head of the avenue — and then, impossibly, threading straight through...
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