Tsar Bomba: The Bomber Crew Who Dropped 50 Megatons
Share this story At 11:32 Moscow time on 30 October 1961, a Soviet Tu-95V bomber over the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic released a bomb eight metres long and about 27 tonnes in weight. It fell under a parachute for just over three minutes. When it went off,...
Sikorsky R-4: Carter Harman’s First Helicopter Combat Rescue
Share this story For days in late April 1944, Technical Sergeant Ed “Murphy” Hladovcak hid on a jungle ridge in Japanese-held Burma with three sick and wounded British soldiers. His Stinson L-1 had come down beside an enemy-held road, the patrols passed...
M-1 Visa: What It Costs a Foreign Student to Learn to Fly in America
Share this story Every brochure for an American flight academy has the same photograph in it. Blue sky, a white Cessna, a young person with a headset and an expression of enormous good fortune. The copy underneath explains how many months it takes and how much it...
Patrouille Suisse: From Hawker Hunters to the Last Red Tigers
Share this story Somewhere over a Swiss valley, six red-and-white jets roll in tight formation, close enough for the pilots to read each other’s helmet visors, with the Alps filling the canopy. For more than six decades that picture has meant one thing to the...
Wizz Air Bomb Threat: Gripen Escorts W6 4302 Into Budapest
Share this story Somewhere over Bosnia and Herzegovina on the morning of Monday 2 November, the crew of Wizz Air flight W6 4302 learned that someone claimed there was a bomb on board. They were carrying passengers from London Luton to Sofia. Within minutes they had...
Lockheed Vega: The Plywood Record-Breaker of Earhart and Post
Share this story On 15 April 1928, a single-engined monoplane lifted off a scraped-out strip of snow at Point Barrow, Alaska, and pointed its nose across the top of the world. Aboard were the Australian explorer Hubert Wilkins and his pilot, Carl Ben Eielson. Their...
IAF Chief Ashutosh Dixit Unveils VAYU, Puts Tejas and AMCA First
Share this story Before he said a word about fighters, Ashutosh Dixit did something no briefing note asked of him. On the morning of Sunday 1 November 2026, the new head of the Indian Air Force laid a wreath at the National War Memorial in New Delhi, then turned to...
Que Sera Sera: The First Plane to Land at the South Pole, 1956
Share this story It was a Halloween evening, and the temperature outside was nearly 60 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. At 8:34 p.m. local time on 31 October 1956, a twin-engined Navy transport with skis bolted to its wheels bounced across the hard snow of the polar...
Slovakia MiG-29 Case Reopened: Prosecutor Revives Ukraine Jet Probe
Share this story Three and a half years after the last Slovak MiG-29 crossed into Ukraine, the jets are back in a Slovak legal file. On Friday 30 October 2026, Prosecutor General Maroš Žilinka ordered criminal proceedings over the 2023 donation of the...
Lawnchair Larry: The Truck Driver Who Flew a Lawn Chair to 16,000 Feet
Share this story On 2 July 1982, Larry Walters, a 33-year-old truck driver, sat down in an aluminium lawn chair in a backyard in San Pedro, California, cut the tether, and went straight up. He had tied 42 helium-filled weather balloons to the chair. He had planned a...
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