History & Legends, Military Aviation
On paper, it should have worked. Take the superb Douglas Skyraider, replace its thundering piston engine with a modern turboprop of more than 5,000 horsepower, and the U.S. Navy would have a carrier attack aircraft faster and harder-hitting than anything afloat....
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Part 7 of The Race for the Bomb, an Afterburner focus series. The Manhattan Project cost 1.9 billion dollars. The aircraft built to deliver its product cost three billion. This is the engineering story of the B-29 Superfortress — bought off the drawing board, nearly...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Part 4 of The Race for the Bomb, an Afterburner focus series. Fission was discovered in Berlin. So why did the bomb come from New Mexico? This part examines the German and Japanese programs — and the errors, raids and illusions that stopped them. The Hardangervidda,...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
In the mid-1950s, Britain faced a nightmare: waves of Soviet bombers climbing ever higher and flying ever faster, each one potentially carrying an atomic bomb. Conventional fighters simply could not climb quickly enough to catch them in time. So British engineers...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Every fighter ever built was designed to fight — to turn, climb, chase and dodge. The Douglas F6D Missileer was designed to do none of those things. It was, quite deliberately, a fighter built never to dogfight: a big, slow, straight-winged aircraft that would...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
When the United States cancelled its X-20 Dyna-Soar spaceplane in 1963, the idea did not die. It moved east. In the design bureau of Artem Mikoyan, Soviet engineers set out to build their own winged spacecraft — one that would ride a rocket toward orbit and then...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
It was fat, slow, and so unlovely that the men who flew it simply called it “the Whale.” It set no speed records and never graced a recruiting poster. And yet the Douglas F3D Skyknight did something no glamorous day-fighter could claim: on a dark night...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Almost everyone can tell you that Chuck Yeager was first to break the sound barrier. Far fewer can name the man who first flew at twice the speed of sound. He was Scott Crossfield, and he did it on November 20, 1953, in a sleek, snow-white rocket plane called the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
For thirty-five summers, one of the most beloved sounds over the Swiss Alps was the deep, uneven drone of three radial engines and the sight of a corrugated metal skin catching the light. It was the Junkers Ju 52 — “Tante Ju,” Auntie Ju —...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
The Bell P-39 Airacobra was, by common American opinion, a disappointment. Underpowered at altitude, saddled with a fearsome reputation, it was the fighter U.S. airmen sang rude songs about. And yet it enabled a single pilot to shoot down more enemy aircraft than any...
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