Share this story In the late 1950s the US Army went looking for a machine that no one had ever quite built: something between a jeep and a helicopter. A flying jeep — a simple platform a soldier could stand on, lift straight up, and buzz over a battlefield. It sounds...
Share this story On paper, the Rockwell XFV-12 was a dream: a supersonic, Mach-2 fighter that could rise straight up off a small ship’s deck, fight like an F-4 Phantom, and land vertically in a space no runway could offer. The US Navy wanted it badly. Rockwell...
Share this story In 1942, someone at General Motors had a tidy idea: instead of designing a new fighter from scratch, why not bolt one together from parts of aircraft that already existed? Take a Mustang’s wings, a dive-bomber’s tail, a Corsair’s landing gear, wrap...
Share this story Everyone knows the Lockheed A-12 and its famous descendant, the SR-71 Blackbird — the black, Mach-3 spy planes that outran every missile ever fired at them. Almost nobody remembers the aircraft that nearly beat them to the job: Convair’s Kingfish, an...
Share this story It could out-climb an F-16, scramble from cold to airborne in under half a minute, and fire a radar missile years before its rival could. It was cheap to run, brilliant to fly, and paid for entirely out of one company’s own pocket. And it sold exactly...
Share this story Before the Spitfire, before the Battle of Britain, there was a series of air races over water — gaudy, dangerous, and watched by hundreds of thousands. The Schneider Trophy looked like pure spectacle. In fact, it was quietly forging the engine...
Share this story In May 1949, a test pilot was reminded that the day chosen for his aircraft’s maiden flight — the 13th — fell on a Friday, and that no one would blame him for waiting. He was unmoved. The aeroplane he flew that day went on to serve...
Share this story It was a calm, clear night over the Indian Ocean on 24 June 1982 when the passengers of British Airways Flight 9 noticed something strange: a glow along the wings, and puffs of smoke curling into the cabin that smelled of sulphur. Up front, the crew...
Share this story A German fighter pilot once emptied his guns into an American P-47, then pulled up alongside to watch it fall out of the sky. It did not fall. Baffled, he flew wing-to-wing with the shredded aircraft, stared at the damage, shook his head, and peeled...
Share this story In 1940, as the Battle of Britain raged, the de Havilland company was quietly building a bomber the Air Ministry had not asked for and did not want — and it was making it out of wood. Officials scoffed. Within two years, that wooden aeroplane...
Share this story On 10 March 1956, a slender British delta streaked down a measured course over the English south coast and did something no aircraft had ever done: it flew faster than 1,000 miles per hour in level flight. When the timekeepers finished their sums, the...
Share this story Most airlines paint their jets. Taiwan’s STARLUX hired one of the world’s most famous artists to turn an Airbus A350-1000 into a mirror-finished flying sculpture — and on 15 July, it flew the thing across the Pacific to Phoenix.Flight JX026...
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