Aviation World, History & Legends
Share this story By almost every technical measure, the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar was the finest airliner of its generation. It could fly an approach and land itself in thick fog when rivals still needed a pilot’s hands. Its ride was smoother, its systems...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story In the summer of 1940, outnumbered RAF fighter pilots kept turning up in exactly the right place to meet the Luftwaffe, again and again. To the Germans it looked like uncanny luck. It was nothing of the sort. Along the coast of Britain stood a line of...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story Decades before the V-22 Osprey, America built an aircraft that could lift off vertically like a helicopter, then cruise at over 400 mph like an airliner — by rotating its entire wing. It worked. It was decades ahead of its time. And almost...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story In the mid-1970s, two American planemakers built four extraordinary transport prototypes that could land almost anywhere and stop almost immediately. Both designs worked brilliantly. Both lost. And then one of them quietly went on to father one of the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story Line the Tupolev Tu-128 up next to the bombers it was built to shoot down, and you might struggle to tell the hunter from the prey. At nearly 30 metres long and around 43 tonnes, this Soviet interceptor was bigger and heavier than many of the aircraft...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story In 1997, the Russian government formally cancelled the fighter that was supposed to answer the American F-22. Three years later, in front of an invited crowd at Zhukovsky, that cancelled fighter took off anyway. The Mikoyan 1.44 is one of...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story The comparison arrives within about ninety seconds of any conversation about defence budgets. Europe is rearming, China is building warships at a pace nobody can match, and somebody says it: this is how it felt before 1914. Sometimes they reach for...
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