Houthis Claim a Saudi F-15 Shot Down Over Marib, Yemen
Share this story The first thing the world saw was a tailfin. Scorched, standing upright in a burnt patch of Marib scrub, with the green and white of the Saudi flag still legible through the soot. On 16 September 2026, Yemen’s Houthi movement — formally Ansar Allah —...
The Top American Ace of Vietnam Never Flew the Aircraft
Share this story The highest-scoring American ace of the Vietnam War never flew the aeroplane. On 9 September 1972, Captain Charles B. DeBellevue shot down his fifth and sixth MiGs from the back seat of an F-4D Phantom. He was a weapon systems officer. The stick and...
Russia Beat GPS Jamming With a Two-Dollar Compass
Share this story Ukraine has spent this war building some of the densest electronic warfare cover on earth. Along much of the front line, GPS and GLONASS simply do not work. A drone that depends on satellite navigation arrives over the target having forgotten where it...
How a Heat-Seeking Missile Works, and Why Flares Stopped Saving You
Share this story A radar-guided missile announces itself. It has to: something has to illuminate the target, and the moment that happens the target knows it is being shot at.An infrared missile says nothing at all. It emits no signal, because it is not looking for a...
Why Airliners Still Have Ashtrays Decades After the Smoking Ban
Share this story Smoking has been banned on commercial flights for decades. The signs are lit from pushback to gate. Tampering with a lavatory smoke detector will get you arrested.And yet every airliner rolling off the line at Toulouse or Renton this year has an...
Why American Aircraft Start With N: Registration Prefixes Explained
Share this story Every civil aircraft in the world carries a registration painted on its tail or fuselage, and the first character or two tells you where it is registered. American aircraft start with N. British with G. German with D. Swiss with HB.The obvious...
The Hardest Day: 18 August 1940 Cost More Than Battle of Britain Day
Share this story The Battle of Britain has a famous date, and it is 15 September. That is Battle of Britain Day, the climax, the one in the calendar.It is not the day that cost the most. That was Sunday 18 August 1940, when the Luftwaffe made an all-out attempt to...
The Doolittle Raid: Sixteen B-25s That Were Never Coming Back
Share this story At 07:38 on the morning of 18 April 1942, a 70-ton Japanese patrol boat called the Nittō Maru spotted an American task force about 650 nautical miles east of Japan and got a radio message off before the cruiser Nashville sank her.That message...
Turkish Airlines Held Up 150 Boeing 737 MAX Over the Engines
Share this story Turkish Airlines does not have an aircraft problem. It has an engine problem, and it has spent the better part of a year using one to solve the other.A 150-aircraft Boeing 737 MAX order — announced with considerable ceremony after President...
Korean Air Confirms 103 Boeing Jets in a $44.8 Billion Deal
Share this story Korean Air signed the paperwork in Seoul this week, and the number on it is the largest in the airline’s history: roughly 60 trillion won, about $44.8 billion, for 103 Boeing aircraft and the engines to keep them running.This is the moment an...
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