Be-200 Altair, Russia’s Amphibious Water Bomber
Share this story A wall of orange climbs a Greek hillside, and out of the smoke drops a white-and-blue jet skimming the sea. It touches the waves, drinks twelve tonnes of water in fourteen seconds, hauls itself back into the sky and unloads the lot onto the flames....
Fouga Magister, Butterfly-Tailed Jet That Went to War
Share this story On the morning of 5 June 1967, a handful of little French-built trainers lifted off from Israeli airfields on what looked like a routine sortie. Within hours they were diving on armour in the Sinai. The Fouga Magister, a jet designed to teach...
The First Blackhawk Was a Record-Breaking Gunship
Share this story Before the UH-60 wore the name, there was another Blackhawk, and it was a snarling gunship. The Sikorsky S-67 first flew on 20 August 1970, a sleek, low-slung attack helicopter built entirely on Sikorsky’s own money in a frantic nine-month...
Scimitar: Royal Navy’s Swept-Wing Bruiser
Share this story When the Supermarine Scimitar first crashed onto a carrier deck in 1958, it arrived as the biggest, heaviest and most powerful aircraft the Fleet Air Arm had ever tried to operate from a ship. Twin Rolls-Royce Avons gave it such brutal thrust that a...
A Power Bank Diverted This SWISS Atlantic Flight
Share this story Somewhere over the North Atlantic on Sunday evening, a small object in a business-class seat pocket did what airlines now fear more than almost anything else: it began to smoke. The device was a passenger’s power bank. The aircraft was a SWISS...
The Ghost MiG That Crossed Europe Alone
Share this story On the Fourth of July 1989, two American F-15 pilots on alert in the Netherlands were scrambled to intercept an intruder crossing into NATO airspace. What they found was a real Soviet fighter, deep over Western Europe — with no one flying it.It...
France Lost Germany. It May Have Found India.
Share this story Europe’s most ambitious fighter project spent years tearing itself apart. Now, from the wreckage, an unexpected suitor has stepped forward: India.On 7 August 2026, India’s Ministry of Defence confirmed to Parliament that New Delhi has...
Ukraine Blinds Russia’s Air Defenses, 270 km Deep
Share this story A modern air-defense network is only as good as its eyes. Blind the radars and the missiles behind them are firing at ghosts. On 2 August 2026, Ukraine set out to do exactly that — not at the front line, but more than 270 kilometres behind it,...
The Delta That Carried France’s Atom Bomb
Share this story In 1964, France joined the nuclear club on its own terms. Refusing to depend on American or British weapons, it built a sleek supersonic delta to carry its own bomb — a two-seat, twin-engined thoroughbred that could dash toward Moscow at twice...
France Built a Double-Decker Airliner in 1953
Share this story Everyone remembers the Airbus A380 as the great double-decker of the skies. Almost nobody remembers that France built one two generations earlier. In 1953, Air France put into service a broad-shouldered, four-engined airliner with two full passenger...
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