Share this story On October 3, 1967, test pilot William J. “Pete” Knight climbed into a black, dart-shaped aircraft bolted to the wing of a B-52 bomber. At 45,000 feet over the Mojave Desert, the B-52 released him. Knight lit the rocket engine. In the next 84 seconds,...
Share this story On September 6, 1976, a Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat interceptor appeared on Japanese radar screens without warning. It was flying fast, low, and heading straight for Hakodate Airport on the northern island of Hokkaido. The pilot had not filed a flight plan....
Share this story The next generation of Portuguese military pilots will learn to fly in an aircraft that weighs less than a family car. On April 9, 2026, Tecnam and Spanish aviation services provider World Aviation announced that the Portuguese Air Force has selected...
Share this story On April 3, 2026, an F-15E Strike Eagle with the callsign Dude 44 was hit by a shoulder-fired missile over Iran’s Zagros Mountains. Both crew members ejected. The pilot was recovered within hours. The weapons systems officer — a colonel — was not. He...
Share this story On April 8, 2026, two French Air and Space Force Rafale B fighters roared off the runway at Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania, afterburners slicing through the cold Baltic morning. This was not a training exercise. A NATO Alpha Scramble — the real thing...
Share this story In the pre-dawn darkness of April 1, 2026, a Royal Bahraini Air Force F-16 Block 70 lifted off from Sheikh Isa Air Base and turned toward an incoming threat that ground-based air defenses had already failed to stop. Two Iranian drones were inbound....
In August 1914, when the first European armies crossed their borders and the Great War began, military aircraft were used for one purpose: watching. Unarmed reconnaissance planes flew over enemy lines, their observers sketching troop positions and supply routes. The...
Share this story On the morning of April 18, 1942 — four months and eleven days after Pearl Harbor — sixteen B-25 Mitchell medium bombers launched from the pitching deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. They were headed for Tokyo. None of them had enough fuel to...
Share this story Two small, strange-looking aircraft were built in total secrecy at Lockheed’s Skunk Works facility in Burbank, California, between 1976 and 1977. They were angular, faceted, and looked like something a geometry student had folded out of sheet...
Share this story In 1920, Bessie Coleman walked into every flight school in the United States that she could find. Every single one turned her away. She was Black. She was a woman. In Jim Crow America, that was two disqualifications, and neither was negotiable. So she...
Share this story Eugene Jacques Bullard was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1895 — the grandson of enslaved people, the son of a man who had barely escaped a lynch mob. By the time he was eleven years old, he had decided that his future lay anywhere but the American...
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