Share this story In November 1955 the British government cancelled a four-engined jet transport that was around 80 percent built, on the grounds that nobody in Britain wanted it. Eleven months later the same government approved the purchase of fifteen Boeing 707s for...
Share this story In the summer of 1986 the largest aircraft in the world sat on a ramp at Lakehurst, New Jersey, three quarters of a mile from where the Hindenburg had burned. It was 343 feet long. It was a Navy blimp with four helicopters bolted underneath it. On 1...
Share this story The most important document in this story is a memo. It was written on 27 June 1972 by an engineer named Dan Applegate, it ran to a few pages, and it said clearly what was going to happen. Twenty months later it happened. Three hundred and forty-six...
Share this story Somebody put four foam cushions on a heating vent. That is where it starts. Not with a missile, not with a Soviet fighter, not with a catastrophic structural failure. Three cloth-covered cushions stowed on a hot-air outlet under a seat before...
Share this story Two flag carriers that have been quietly cooperating since the early 1960s signed a new agreement in Seoul on 3 September. On its own that would barely register. The timing is what makes it interesting. In fourteen weeks, Asiana Airlines ceases to...
Comparte esta historia. Un breve vídeo publicado en Instagram esta semana muestra algo impensable hace una década: un avión de combate a reacción, sin cabina ni piloto, aterrizando por sí solo en una pista desértica. Se trata del YFQ-44A Fury de Anduril. El...
Comparte esta historia El 31 de agosto de 2026, aproximadamente, sobre una base aérea egipcia, un avión cisterna chino extendió su manguera y reabasteció de combustible a un Rafale de fabricación francesa. El portavoz militar egipcio difundió la imagen; medios chinos la amplificaron en cuestión de horas. Es, hasta donde se sabe...
Comparte esta historia. Es la pregunta que más nos hacen, y es la única sobre aviones de combate que no tiene una respuesta única y honesta. El problema no es que nadie lo sepa. El problema es que la respuesta "mejor" se reduce a cuatro o cinco preguntas diferentes...
Share this story Every flying boat is a compromise between two incompatible shapes. To get off the water you want a deep hull, to keep the propellers clear of spray, and a wing sitting at a high angle so it will unstick. To fly efficiently you want neither of those...
Share this story The Pacific is the largest single feature on the planet. In 1928 nobody had flown across it, and the reason was arithmetic: the distances between usable landfalls were longer than any aircraft could reliably manage, and if you missed the island you...
Share this story In 1926 an oilfield roughneck in Oklahoma took a metal splinter in his left eye and lost it. Seven years later, the same man flew around the world on his own in under eight days, and then went looking for the edge of the atmosphere. Wiley Post had one...
Share this story No aircraft has ever looked faster standing still. The Douglas X-3 Stiletto was sixty-seven feet of needle, with a nose you could have used to open letters and wings so small they looked like an afterthought. Everything about it promised Mach 2. It...
Recent Comments