Fairey Firefly: Two Seats, a Griffon and a Very Long War
Share this story The Royal Navy spent the first half of the Second World War discovering that a carrier fighter needs a second crew member. Over the ocean there are no landmarks, no roads and no friendly towns, and a single-seat pilot who is busy fighting is a pilot...
Hiller Hornet: The Helicopter With Ramjets on Its Blade Tips
Share this story A helicopter is mostly a machine for dealing with the consequences of its own engine. Put a motor in the fuselage and you need a gearbox to get the power up to the rotor, a shaft to carry it, and a tail rotor to stop the fuselage spinning the opposite...
Hawker Siddeley P.1154: The Supersonic Harrier Britain Cancelled
Share this story Britain came within one government decision of fielding a supersonic Harrier. Not a paper study: a funded aircraft with an engine on a test stand and three airframes being built. It was called the Hawker Siddeley P.1154, and the reason it does not...
Joker and Bingo: How Fighter Pilots Talk About Fuel
Share this story Airline pilots talk about fuel in kilograms and minutes, and they argue about it with dispatch before they leave the gate. Fighter pilots use two words, and neither of them is negotiable once airborne. Joker means it is time to start thinking about...
Angled Decks and the Meatball: How Carrier Landings Were Fixed
Share this story For the first thirty years of carrier aviation, landing on a ship worked like this. You flew a curving approach towards a straight deck with aircraft parked on the front half of it. A man standing on the stern waved coloured paddles at you. If you got...
McKinney National Cleared for Airline Flights From November
Share this story Dallas already has one of the busiest airports on earth. On Thursday the FAA decided the region should have another one taking airline passengers, and handed McKinney National Airport a Part 139 operating certificate. McKinney sits about 30 miles...
O’Leary Predicts Europe Ends Up With Four Airlines
Share this story Michael O’Leary was asked on Wednesday whether Ryanair would add a fuel surcharge. He said no. Then he explained, without apparent embarrassment, that he would quite like jet fuel to get more expensive, because it would kill his competitors...
eFlyer 2 Flies at Centennial: Bye Aerospace Starts Flight Tests
Share this story On Thursday, 17 September, a two-seat trainer lifted off from Centennial Airport near Denver at 9:45 in the morning, flew a planned test profile for about six minutes and touched down at 9:51. Nothing about that is remarkable except what was not...
Pilatus PC-12 PRO: The Single-Engine Turboprop That Lands Itself
Share this story The nightmare scenario in single-pilot aviation has always been the same. One person up front, one engine out there, and nobody in the cabin who knows what a glideslope is. If the pilot stops flying, everyone on board has a problem with no solution....
Molotov’s Bomber: The 1942 Pe-8 Flight to Washington
Share this story On 19 May 1942 a four-engined bomber lifted off from Ramenskoye, outside Moscow, and turned west towards a continent that Germany controlled from the Atlantic to the Volga. In the fuselage, sitting on a bench in a heavy flying suit with an oxygen mask...
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