An unpublished executive order, a front company, fake passports and $500 a kill. The Flying Tigers were legal only because they were not soldiers, which is why it took until 1991 to call them veterans.
Shark Mouth Nose Art: Who Painted It First, and Why It Stuck
The Flying Tigers did not invent the shark mouth. They were third in line, behind a Luftwaffe Bf 110 unit and an RAF squadron in Egypt, and behind a German biplane called the whale.
Joby Flies a Cessna Caravan 3,199 Miles With Zero Pilot Input
A single-engine turboprop flew from California to the Atlantic this month, taxied itself, took itself off, found its own way around thunderstorms, slotted into one of the busiest general aviation airports in America without ever having been there, and landed on the...
Navigators and Flight Engineers: How Cockpits Went From Five to Two
Airliners once flew with five people on the flight deck. Three of those jobs no longer exist in the West, and one of them is still lying in a glass nose over Russia today.
Germany’s First F-35A Handed Over at Fort Worth
Lockheed Martin rolled out 35+01 and formally presented it to the German government. The first eight aircraft stay in Arkansas; Germany gets its own in late 2027.
Aeroflot Orders 90 More MC-21s Before the First One Enters Service
A Moscow signing takes Aeroflot to 108 MC-21s, delivered 2029 to 2032. The number currently carrying passengers is zero, and the people who tested it are sceptical.
Blackbeard Goes Into Production: 444 Rounds and an Air Force Cheque
The Navy ordered up to $200 million of Blackbeard, a first lot of 444 rounds. Days later the Air Force Research Laboratory added $16.4 million of its own.
The Mechanic Who Took Off in a Sabre and Had to Land It
On the night of 20 September 1956, a 20-year-old aircraft mechanic at Williams Air Force Base in Arizona took an F-86F Sabre down the runway for a high-speed taxi test, felt the nose go light at 105 knots, decided he no longer had room to stop, and pulled it into the...
Etihad’s Last Stored A380 Flies Home After Six Years at Tarbes
A6-APB left Tarbes on 17 September after nearly six years parked. Nine of Etihad’s ten superjumbos are now back. The tenth was scrapped.
Anduril Joins the Air Force VOLARE Contract to Design Jets in Software
The headline says $85 million. It is a shared ceiling on a multiple-award vehicle, only $50,000 has been obligated, and the period of performance runs to 2036.
The C-17 Eats the Runway. The Air Force Weighed How Much
The reel asks a good question. A C-17 weighs up to 585,000 pounds. It lands on dirt. So how does it stop without hoovering half the runway into four very expensive turbofans? The honest answer is that it does not avoid it. It eats the dirt, and the Air Force has...
ASELSAN Flies Three EW Pods on Two TB2s and Jams a Live Radar
Two Bayraktar TB2s, three ASELSAN pods, one coordinated scenario over Konya: detect the radar, jam it, then image the target area with synthetic aperture radar.
FAA Waives the 2028 Rule: 35 More Boeing 777Fs Get Through
An emissions standard would have stopped 777F deliveries dead on 1 January 2028. The FAA has let 35 more aircraft through, because the replacement is late.
Sully Sullenberger on His Alzheimer’s Diagnosis
Chesley Sullenberger has spent the seventeen years since the Hudson being careful about one thing above all: refusing to let the story be about him alone. He has pushed it back towards the crew, the cabin staff, the ferry captains, the training, the system. He is now...
North Korea Shows Its Drone Production Lines, Not Just Its Drones
Rodong Sinmun published photographs of assembly halls building the Saetbyol-4, the Saetbyol-9 and an unnamed attack drone. Pyongyang has shown the aircraft before. The factory is new.
Marines Take EABO Into Combat for the First Time in Epic Fury
The 31st MEU built forward arming and refueling points in the Middle East and refuelled Army aircraft from them. It was the first combat use of a concept written for a war with China.
Luxembourg Airport Shut for a Night by Unidentified Drones
Unauthorised drones were tracked near and then over Findel on Friday evening. The airport stopped everything, a London flight went to Liege, and nobody knows whose they were.