History & Legends, Military Aviation
It had no tail. It squatted on its undercarriage like a startled bird. It was named after a flying reptile, and in the buttoned-up world of 1930s British aviation it looked like a practical joke. The Westland-Hill Pterodactyl was none of those things. It was a deadly...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Ask anyone to name a First World War fighter ace and you’ll hear the same handful of names: the Red Baron, perhaps Billy Bishop, maybe Albert Ball. You will almost never hear the name of the deadliest pilot the Southern Hemisphere ever produced — a Melbourne boy who...
Aviation World, History & Legends
Look closely at the photograph: those are two full-size 1950s automobiles, parked comfortably underneath the helicopter. Above them sits a single rotor so vast that each of its two blades weighs as much as a small car and is wide enough to walk along. And it was spun...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Ask almost anyone which aircraft won the Battle of Britain and you will get the same answer: the Spitfire. It is one of the most beautiful machines ever built, and it has earned its legend. But it is, at best, only half the story. The aircraft that actually shot down...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
In a refrigerated room hidden beneath London’s Smithfield Meat Market in 1943, behind a screen of hanging animal carcasses, a future Nobel Prize winner was busy perfecting a recipe. Not for food — for a building material. His task: prove that you could build the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
At one minute past one in the morning on December 20, 1989, the warm tropical dark outside the Panamanian Defense Force barracks at Rio Hato was ripped apart by two enormous explosions. Soldiers tumbled from their bunks into the confusion, scanning a black sky for the...
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