Share this story The Short Stirling was the first of the RAF’s great four-engine heavy bombers — into service before the Halifax, before the Lancaster, the aircraft that opened Britain’s strategic bombing war. It was huge, handsome and, in the end,...
Share this story When Soviet-built MiG-15s came screaming over Korea in late 1950 with their swept wings and steep climb, the United States Navy had a problem. Its best carrier jet, the Grumman F9F Panther, was a fine, sturdy machine — but its straight wing...
Share this story In the early 1950s the United States lay awake at night worrying about Soviet bombers slipping across the Arctic in the dark. The aircraft it scrambled to meet them was the Lockheed F-94 Starfire — the first American jet fighter with an...
Share this story In 1935 a newspaper baron dared British industry to build the fastest civil aircraft in Europe. The result was so quick that when the Royal Air Force turned it into a bomber, it could outrun its own fighters. Two years later that same design flew the...
Share this story The Blackburn Skua was slow, awkward and asked to do two jobs it could not both do well. It has been mocked ever since as one of the Fleet Air Arm’s worst fighters. And yet in the first months of the Second World War this unloved machine scored...
Share this story Nobody ever called the Fairey Barracuda beautiful. With its high shoulder-mounted wing, spindly legs and a clutter of struts and flaps hanging beneath it, the Fleet Air Arm’s torpedo and dive bomber looked like it had been assembled from spare...
Share this story On the night of 30 March 1944, RAF Bomber Command sent 795 heavy bombers to Nuremberg. Ninety-six of them never came home. In a single night, in a few hours over Germany, more than 500 young airmen were killed — the worst night the Command...
Share this story In the spring of 1942 the brand-new Avro Lancaster had barely gone to war when Bomber Command sent twelve of them on a mission that bordered on suicidal: fly in broad daylight, at treetop height, a thousand miles across occupied Europe to bomb a...
Share this story On the morning of 21 March 1945, twenty de Havilland Mosquitos came in over Copenhagen at rooftop height, so low that Danes on the streets could see the crews’ faces. Their target was the Shellhus — the Gestapo’s headquarters in the...
Share this story Some aircraft are cancelled because they fail. The Douglas F5D Skylancer was cancelled because it was too good, too late, and built by the wrong company. It went supersonic on its very first flight, handled beautifully, and impressed every pilot who...
Share this story On November 6, 1945, an American fighter turned onto final approach to a small escort carrier off California when its engine quit. The pilot did not bail out. He kept coming, touched down, and caught a wire — and in doing so made the first...
Share this story Take an F-16 Fighting Falcon, throw away its wing, and bolt on a vast cranked-arrow delta that nearly doubles its area. Stretch the fuselage, cram in 65 percent more fuel, and hang bombs from twenty-seven stations. What you get flies farther, carries...
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