Aviation World, History & Legends
Share this story You have almost certainly seen this crash, even if you have never heard of the aircraft. A stubby, wingless machine tumbles end over end across a desert lakebed, throwing up a cloud of dust, and comes to rest upside down. For millions of people, that...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story In 1960, a young civilian test pilot named Neil Armstrong was quietly picked to fly into space — not in a capsule on top of a rocket, but in a winged glider that would ride a booster to orbit and then fly home to a runway like an aeroplane. The...
Aviation World, History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story It looked like something bolted together in a shed: an open cockpit, fixed landing gear, a wing borrowed from a light aircraft. But the ungainly little Bell X-14 could do something almost nothing else in 1957 could — rise straight up off the...
Aviation World, History & Legends
Share this story On a clear summer morning in 1956, two airliners climbed out of Los Angeles minutes apart, each carrying dozens of people east across the desert. Somewhere over the Grand Canyon, in a sky so vast it should have held them both a thousand times over,...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story 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...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story On September 27, 1956, Captain Milburn “Mel” Apt became the first human being to fly at three times the speed of sound. Minutes later he was dead. The Bell X-2 gave the world its first taste of Mach 3 and, on the very same flight, its...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story 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...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story In the winter of 1942, the odds facing an American bomber crew over Europe were close to a coin toss. The Eighth Air Force flew its heavy bombers by daylight, without enough fighter escort, straight into the teeth of German flak and fighters....
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story On a French airfield in 1916, you might have found two lion cubs named Whiskey and Soda padding between the tents, and a group of young Americans who had crossed an ocean to fight a war their own country had not yet joined. This was the Escadrille...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Share this story By the summer of 1944, Charles Lindbergh was the most famous pilot alive and one of the most controversial men in America. He had crossed the Atlantic alone in 1927 and been adored for it. Then he had campaigned to keep the United States out of the...
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