Francis Gary Powers: The U-2 Shot Down Over the Soviet Union
Share this story It was May Day 1960, and the Soviet Union was celebrating. Somewhere above 70,000 feet over the Ural Mountains, a lone American pilot in a glider-winged jet was photographing its secrets. Francis Gary Powers had taken off from Peshawar in Pakistan on...
Yuri Gagarin’s Last Flight: The MiG-15UTI Crash of 1968
Share this story Seven years after he became the first human being in space, Yuri Gagarin was back in a very ordinary cockpit. On the morning of 27 March 1968 he climbed into a two-seat MiG-15UTI jet trainer at Chkalovsky air base near Moscow, with his instructor...
Canopy Detonating Cord: Why Some Jets Shatter the Canopy to Eject
Share this story Look closely at the canopy of a Red Arrows Hawk, a Harrier or a T-6 Texan II and you will see thin, wavy lines running across the transparency like a child’s drawing of lightning. They are not cracks, and they are not heating wires. They are...
Flying Animals: How Pandas, Horses and an Orca Travel by Air
Share this story On Sunday a FedEx Boeing 777F landed in Atlanta carrying nothing but two giant pandas, their bamboo and their keepers. It made headlines, but it was not unusual. Every year airlines and air forces move racehorses, zoo animals, livestock and even...
Airshow Smoke Explained: How the Red Arrows and Blue Angels Do It
Share this story Nine red jets pull up in front of the crowd, and on a word from the leader, “Smoke on, go,” thick white trails pour from their tails. Seconds later, red and blue join the white, and the Union Flag is painted across the sky. Display smoke...
Dead Man’s Curve: The Helicopter Height-Velocity Diagram Explained
Share this story A helicopter hovering 200 feet above a field looks like the safest thing in the sky. It is going nowhere, slowly. But if its single engine stops at that moment, the pilot is in one of the worst places a helicopter can be: too high to simply drop onto...
Night Vision Goggles: How Pilots Fly in the Dark
Share this story On a moonless night over the desert, the world outside a fighter canopy is black. No horizon, no terrain, no other aircraft, only the glow of the instruments. Then the pilot flips two small tubes down in front of their visor, and the landscape...
Tail Strikes Explained: Why Airliners Scrape Their Tails
Share this story Watch a long airliner rotate on take-off and there is a moment when the nose is high, the main wheels are still on the concrete and the tail is only a metre or two above the runway. Rotate a little too fast, or a little too early, and that gap closes....
Quebec Helicopter Crash: Four Killed Near Montreal
Share this story It was meant to be a birthday treat: a short helicopter ride over the farmland of Quebec’s Montérégie region on a Saturday afternoon. Shortly after take-off on 26 September, the helicopter came down in a field in...
FedEx Panda Express: A 777F Flies Two Giant Pandas to Atlanta
Share this story The cargo manifest was short. Two giant pandas, some fresh bamboo, water, a few favourite treats and their keepers from Zoo Atlanta. That was the entire load on a FedEx Boeing 777F that took off from Chengdu in the small hours of Sunday 27 September...
Recent Comments