Flat Spin: The F-14 Mode That Ends in Ejection
Share this story The most famous three minutes in aviation cinema are a flat spin. An F-14 departs, settles into a flat rotation, and the crew ejects into the canopy.The remarkable thing about that scene is not the drama. It is that the US Navy’s own flight...
ShinMaywa US-2: The Flying Boat That Lands in 3-Metre Waves
Share this story On 21 June 2013, a yacht called Eolus struck a sperm whale roughly 1,200 kilometres south-east of Miyagi prefecture and began to sink. Two men took to a life raft: a Japanese newscaster and a blind sailor attempting to cross the Pacific.A US-2...
Energy-Maneuverability: How John Boyd Rewrote the Dogfight
Share this story At Nellis Air Force Base in the late 1950s, an instructor kept a standing bet with anyone who wanted it. Take up a position on his tail, the classic winning position in air combat. He would be reversed and behind you inside forty seconds, or he would...
Ground Effect: The Cushion of Air That Isn’t Really There
Share this story Every pilot has felt it. The aeroplane is descending toward the runway, the flare begins, and somewhere in the last few feet the whole machine seems to change its mind about landing. It floats. It sits there, refusing to settle, eating runway.The...
Terrain-Following Radar: Flying at 200 Feet in the Dark
Share this story The U-2 shootdown over Sverdlovsk in 1960 settled an argument. Altitude was no longer sanctuary. If you wanted to reach a defended target, you would have to go under the radar rather than over it, at night, in weather, at a few hundred feet.Which...
Wake Turbulence: The Invisible Tornado Behind Every Airliner
Share this story On 7 January 2017, a Bombardier Challenger 604 was cruising at 34,000 feet over the Arabian Sea, roughly 500 nautical miles from the nearest land. An Emirates A380 passed 1,000 feet overhead in the opposite direction, entirely legally.Forty-seven...
Mach Tuck: The Dive That Nearly Killed the First Jet Pilots
Share this story In October 1947, Chuck Yeager pulled back on the control column of the Bell X-1 at Mach 0.94 and nothing happened. The aircraft carried on exactly as before, as though the stick were not connected to anything.He shut down the rocket motor. As the X-1...
Compressor Stall: Why a Jet Engine Coughs Fire
Share this story A jet engine is a machine for keeping air moving in one direction. When it briefly stops doing that, the result is spectacular: a bang like an explosion, a sheet of flame out of the tailpipe, sometimes out of the intake as well, and an aircraft that...
NASA Goes Shopping for a New Jet
Share this story For more than sixty years, the sound of an astronaut heading to work has been the shriek of a Northrop T-38 Talon. Now NASA is starting to think about what comes next. The agency’s Johnson Space Center has opened market research for a modern jet...
The B-52s Are Coming Back to Spain
Share this story The United States is quietly building more room for its heavy bombers in southern Spain. Under a new military-construction plan, the U.S. Air Force wants to expand the apron at Morón Air Base near Seville so it can park up to nine B-52...
Recent Comments