History & Legends, Military Aviation
Just after dawn on October 25, 1944, lookouts on a cluster of small American ships off the island of Samar saw something that should not have been there: pagoda masts on the horizon. The most powerful surface fleet Japan could still put to sea — battleships led...
Aviation World, History & Legends
Twenty years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay set foot on the summit of Mount Everest, two men in open-cockpit biplanes looked down on it from above. On April 3, 1933, a small British expedition did something that sounds impossible for the technology of its...
Aviation World, History & Legends
Twenty-one years ago today, on August 14, 2005, a Boeing 737 crossed the sky over Greece with everyone aboard already beyond saving. It flew straight and level, obedient to its autopilot, holding its assigned altitude and following its route as if nothing were wrong....
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On 3 July 1950, barely a week into the Korean War, Lieutenant JG Leonard Plog rolled his straight-winged jet onto the tail of a propeller-driven Yak-9 and squeezed the trigger. It was the first air-to-air kill ever scored by a US Navy jet, and it belonged to a stubby,...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Ask anyone who served in Vietnam what the war sounded like, and many will give you the same answer: a rhythmic, chopping whop-whop-whop rolling in over the trees. It was the sound of the Bell UH-1 — the Huey — and depending on which end of it you were on,...
Aviation World, History & Legends
It was three days after Christmas, 1972. A brand-new Lockheed L-1011 TriStar was on final approach to Miami with 176 people aboard when a tiny green light — the one confirming the nose landing gear was down and locked — failed to come on. It was a...
Aviation World, History & Legends
Thirteen minutes after leaving Birmingham on the morning of 10 June 1990, the pilots of British Airways Flight 5390 had loosened their shoulder straps and set breakfast on their laps. Then, with a bang like a bomb, the left cockpit windscreen tore away — and...
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