Shot Through the Skull, He Flew On
On 7 August 1942, over an island the Americans had invaded that very morning, a .30-calibre bullet passed through Saburō Sakai’s skull. It blinded his right eye and paralysed his left side. He was 560 nautical miles from home, alone, at war, in a fighter with no...
The B-29 That Almost Came Home
On 21 May 1995, on a frozen lake 280 miles north of Thule, Greenland, a B-29 Superfortress that had not moved in forty-eight years swung onto its makeshift ice runway under its own power. Four rebuilt engines ran sweetly. Half a century of Arctic exile was about to...
Nineteen Hours, Seven Thousand Souls
Just after eight on the morning of 29 April 1975, American Radio Service in Saigon interrupted its programming to announce that the temperature was “105 degrees and rising.” Then it played White Christmas. In a city where it never snows, in the last April...
The Bomber That Hit the Empire State
Saturday morning, 28 July 1945. New York is wrapped in fog so thick that the top third of the Empire State Building has simply vanished. At 9:40 a.m., office workers on the 79th floor hear a sound no office worker should ever hear: aircraft engines, close, and getting...
How Jets Trick Missiles Into Missing
On the night of 24 July 1943, 791 British bombers crossed the German coast toward Hamburg. In each aircraft, a crewman knelt by the flare chute with a stopwatch, shoving out one paper bundle every minute. Each bundle held 2,200 strips of aluminium-coated paper,...
A Spy, a Pilot, and a Stolen MiG-21
On the morning of 16 August 1966, an Iraqi Air Force captain named Munir Redfa strapped into his MiG-21F-13 for what his squadron believed was a routine long-range training sortie. He had full fuel tanks — a privilege he had rarely been granted — and a...
The Strike Eagles Came Home as Monsters
The first eight came in before sunset on 1 July, dropping onto RAF Lakenheath’s runway one after another. The last three arrived in the dark, their names unreadable. Eleven F-15E Strike Eagles of the 48th Fighter Wing, home from the Iran air war — and...
Poland Freezes Its MiGs for Ukraine
In the spring of 2023, Poland became the first NATO country to send fighter jets to Ukraine — fourteen MiG-29s, handed over while other capitals were still debating. Three years later, the last fourteen Fulcrums in Polish service were supposed to follow them...
Iron Dome Just Got a Laser Sidekick
For fifteen years, Iron Dome has answered incoming rockets with a $50,000 interceptor. Now it has a second option on the trigger: light. Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced on 30 June that a comprehensive Iron Dome test series has, for the first time, folded...
An Eagle and a Ghost Fly Together
One photo, two aircraft, and a very large hint about the future of air combat. On 1 July, Pacific Air Forces posted imagery of a US Air Force F-15EX Eagle II flying over the Philippine Sea in close formation with something no American fighter had been photographed...
Recent Comments