Aviation World, History & Legends
Share this story On 6 August 1969, a Soviet helicopter lifted 40,204.5 kilograms — just over 40 tonnes — to a height of 2,255 metres. That is roughly the weight of a loaded articulated lorry, carried straight up by rotors. No helicopter has lifted more, before or...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story A jet aeroplane hovering ten feet above a runway is doing something aerodynamically absurd. There is no airflow over the wings, so the control surfaces do nothing. The only things keeping it upright are puffs of compressed air from nozzles at the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story On the night of 11/12 June 1943, Major Werner Streib took a pre-production Heinkel He 219 up from Venlo against an RAF raid on Düsseldorf. Between 01:05 and 02:22 he claimed five bombers — four Halifaxes and a Lancaster, by the Smithsonian’s...
Aviation World, History & Legends
Share this story An Airbus A330 of that weight should touch down at about 135 knots. On 13 April 2010, Cathay Pacific 780 arrived at Hong Kong at 231 knots — with both thrust levers at idle, one engine stuck at seventy percent power, the other stuck below idle,...
Aviation World, History & Legends
Share this story Everybody who knows anything about the Antonov An-2 knows the same thing about it: that the flight manual has no stall speed, and that if the engine quits you simply hold the stick back and the aeroplane parachutes gently to earth at 40 km/h. It is a...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story In 1937 Focke-Wulf flew a fighter that was roughly 80 km/h faster than the Messerschmitt Bf 109 then in service, using exactly the same engines. It had twice the range. It weighed twice as much and still outran the thing it was compared against. Nine...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story Put two engines in a fighter and you normally end up with something like a Bf 110: two nacelles, one on each wing, and an aeroplane that is bigger than the thing it is trying to shoot down. Kawasaki tried a different answer. They put one engine in...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story Every helicopter pilot knows the problem with ejecting from a helicopter. Above your head, turning at several hundred revolutions per minute, are the blades. Fire yourself upwards and you go through them. Which is why, in more than a century of rotary...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story In the autumn of 1982, eight Soviet bombers came down on the USS Enterprise and USS Midway in the North Pacific and locked their radars on both carriers from about 190 kilometres out. The US Navy’s response was deliberately restrained, because...
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