Aviation World, Military Aviation, News
On July 4, virtually everything in the US military that flies made an appearance over Washington. Three bombers in one formation. Eight Thunderbirds. A brand-new Air Force One with a Raptor escort. The one aircraft everybody on the internet was actually waiting for...
Aviation World, History & Legends
In the autumn of 1932, a small, barrel-chested aeroplane painted red and white sat on a Cleveland airfield looking less like an aircraft than a cartoon of one. It was almost all engine — a giant radial nose bolted to a stubby fuselage, with the cockpit shoved so far...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On the afternoon of August 16, 1956, residents of the Los Angeles suburbs looked up to a strange and frankly alarming sight: two jet fighters chasing a lone, pilotless aircraft in tightening circles, hurling rockets at it — and missing, again and again, while the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
At a secret airfield in the Nevada desert in the early 1980s, a test pilot lined up one of the ugliest aircraft ever built and pushed the throttles forward. It looked less like a jet than a flying shipping container — deep-bodied, boxy, with a curved back and a...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Picture an aircraft that does not sit on a runway but stands upright on its tail, nose pointed at the sky like a rocket. Around its waist spins a three-bladed wing, driven not by an engine in the fuselage but by ramjets screaming at the very tips of the blades. To...
Aviation World, History & Legends
From the moment humans first left the ground, a certain kind of pilot has asked a dangerous question: what happens if I try this? The answers fill the wildest chapter of aviation history — a century of loops, rolls, dives and impossible threading of gaps, flown by men...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Somewhere over central France in the late 1950s, test pilot André Turcat pushes a strange delta-winged aircraft past the speed where a normal jet engine begins to gasp for air. And that is when the Nord Griffon comes alive. Behind him, a ramjet the size of a small...
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