Aviation World, History & Legends
In the early 1960s, two American giants owned the jet age: Boeing’s 707 and the Douglas DC-8. Convair, a division of General Dynamics, decided it could not out-size them — so it tried to out-run them.The result was the Convair 990 Coronado: a sleek...
Aviation World, History & Legends
Doug White was having the worst week of his life. He, his wife Terri and their two daughters were flying home to Louisiana from Florida, where they had just buried his brother. It was Easter Sunday, 2009. White, a 56-year-old private pilot who had only ever flown...
Aviation World, History & Legends
At 08:47 on the morning of 27 December 1991, a nearly new SAS MD-81 lifted off from a frozen Stockholm-Arlanda. It had sat out the night in near-freezing air with cold fuel chilling its wings, and a layer of clear ice — invisible, glass-smooth — had built...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
By 1942 Eddie Rickenbacker had already cheated death more times than most men attempt it. He was America’s “Ace of Aces” from the First World War, a former Indianapolis 500 racer, and the hard-driving boss of Eastern Air Lines. He was in his early...
Aviation World, History & Legends
On the afternoon of 24 May 1988, a nearly new Boeing 737-300 was threading between thunderstorm cells on approach to New Orleans. In the left seat sat Captain Carlos Dárdano — twenty-nine years old, and flying with one eye, the other lost to gunfire in...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On paper, the Yakovlev Yak-38 looked like Moscow’s answer to the Harrier: a jet that could rise straight off a deck with no catapult, hover, and land vertically. In practice it was one of the most compromised combat aircraft of the Cold War.The Soviet Navy...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Before dawn on New Year’s Day 1945, while much of the Allied camp slept off its celebrations, hundreds of German fighters lifted off in near-total silence. No radios. Incomplete maps. Pilots who, in many cases, had been told only minutes earlier where they were...
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