In 1936, American Airlines president C.R. Smith made an audacious request to Donald Douglas: build an airliner that could carry passengers across America in 16 hours and make money doing it. The result was the Douglas DC-3 — an aircraft so well-designed that it...
Quick FactsNationalityIsraeli 🇮🇱Aerial Victories17 (highest Western jet ace)Aircraft FlownF-4 Phantom II, Mirage IIIWarsSix-Day War, War of Attrition, Yom Kippur WarBorn29 Oct 1938Unit101 Squadron “First Fighter Squadron” Giora Epstein — via Wikimedia...
He failed five times. Each time, he climbed into a capsule smaller than a garden shed, was lifted to 35,000 feet by a balloon the size of a 14-storey building, and tried to navigate the unpredictable jet streams around the entire planet. Each time, weather, equipment...
Quick FactsNationalityAmerican 🇺🇸Aerial Victories11.5 (WWII ace); also 1st pilot to break sound barrierAircraft FlownP-51 Mustang, Bell X-1, F-86 SabreWarsWorld War II, Korean War (advisor)Born / Died13 Feb 1923 – 7 Dec 2020 (age 97)Unit357th Fighter Group (WWII)...
On New Year’s Day 1914, a crowd gathered on the waterfront in St. Petersburg, Florida, to watch history. A Benoist XIV flying boat — a wood-and-canvas biplane with a pusher propeller and a hull designed to land on water — taxied out across Tampa Bay. In the...
Quick FactsNationalitySoviet 🇷🇺Aerial Victories22 (highest jet ace in history, Korean War)Aircraft FlownMiG-15bisWarsKorean WarBorn / Died5 May 1923 – 9 Nov 1986 (age 63)Unit17th IAP (Fighter Aviation Regiment) MiG-15 is shot down by US Navy planes over Korea c1952 —...
On 1 May 1960, the Eisenhower administration told the world that a NASA weather research aircraft had gone missing over Turkey. It was a carefully constructed lie — and it lasted exactly four days. On 5 May, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev revealed that they had shot...
On 2 May 1952, a British Overseas Airways Corporation de Havilland Comet lifted off from London Heathrow and flew to Johannesburg. It carried 36 passengers in pressurised comfort at 35,000 feet, cruising at 500 mph — twice the speed of any existing airliner. The jet...
Quick FactsNationalityFinnish 🇫🇮Aerial Victories94 (highest non-German ace of WWII)Aircraft FlownBrewster Buffalo, Bf 109GWarsWinter War, Continuation WarBorn / Died21 Feb 1914 – 21 Feb 1999 (age 85 — died on his birthday)UnitLLv 24, HLeLv 34 Eino Ilmari Juutilainen —...
For 462 days, Western aircraft landed at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport every three minutes around the clock. They brought coal. They brought flour. They brought powdered milk and dried eggs and medicines. At the peak of the operation, a fully loaded transport...
Recent Comments