Saint-Nazaire’s U-Boat Base: The Bunker the Bombers Could Not Break
Share this story On the Loire estuary in western France stands one of the largest structures the Second World War left behind: the former U-boat base of Saint-Nazaire. Built by Germany in 1941 and 1942, it sheltered submarines that attacked Allied convoys in the...
Kursk Air Battle 1943: Il-2s, Stukas and the Fight Above the Tanks
Share this story At dawn on 5 July 1943, before the first German tank rolled forward, large formations of Soviet bombers, Shturmoviks and fighters headed for the Luftwaffe airfields around Kharkov and Belgorod. The plan was simple: catch the German air fleet on the...
Concorde’s Air Intakes: How Shock Waves Slowed Mach 2 Air for the Olympus
Share this story Concorde’s Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 engines were turbojets, and like every jet engine their compressors needed subsonic air. At Mach 2 cruise, the air reaching the front of each nacelle was travelling at about 1,350 mph. The job of slowing...
Why the E-6B TACAMO Drags a Five-Mile Wire Behind It
Share this story A ballistic missile submarine on patrol wants to stay deep and silent. That makes it hard to talk to: ordinary radio waves barely penetrate seawater. The US Navy’s answer, since the 1960s, has been an aircraft that unreels a wire antenna several...
Bruce McCandless and the MMU: The First Untethered Spacewalk
Share this story On 7 February 1984, Bruce McCandless II released the last connection between himself and Space Shuttle Challenger and flew away. Strapped into the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a nitrogen-powered backpack, he became the first person to move freely through...
Laker Skytrain 1977: The £59 Walk-On Fare That Changed Airlines
Share this story On the morning of 26 September 1977, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 with the word Skytrain painted along its fuselage took off from London Gatwick for New York’s JFK. Its passengers had not booked their seats weeks in advance. They had turned up,...
Global Thunder 27: British F-35Bs Escort a B-52 Over the High North
Share this story In the early hours of 24 October 2026, UTC, a single B-52H Stratofortress using the callsign HUSH 11 left Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and pointed its nose at the Atlantic. Flight trackers listening to its HF position reports watched it...
MQ-9B Airborne Early Warning: Saab LoyalEye Radar Flies on a Drone
Share this story Somewhere over Southern California, instrumented “red” fighters played the enemy, airliners went about their business and ships moved at sea. Watching them at the same time, from long range, was not a big radar jet full of operators. It...
HYDEF Hypersonic Interceptor: Europe’s Answer Clears Stage One
Share this story A hypersonic glide vehicle gives a defender very little time and even less certainty. It flies inside the atmosphere at more than five times the speed of sound and can change course on the way in. Europe wants an interceptor designed specifically for...
Chinese Spaceplane: DIA Releases the Clearest Image Yet
Share this story For six years, China’s reusable spaceplane has been one of spaceflight’s best-kept secrets. It launches on a rocket, stays in orbit for months, releases small objects, lands on a runway in the desert, and Beijing says almost nothing about...
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