Share this story By 1939 the biplane was supposed to be finished. Monoplane fighters — the Bf 109, the Spitfire, the Hurricane — were establishing what air combat in World War II would look like. And yet the Soviet Union was, that same year, accepting deliveries of a...
Share this story In 1960 the Convair B-58 Hustler was, by every measurable standard, the most advanced combat aircraft on Earth. It could sustain Mach 2 — a speed contemporary fighters could reach only in short dashes. It carried a thermonuclear weapon in a detachable...
Share this story It is the kind of idea that should never have left the napkin. Take a small tank, weighing roughly 5.5 tonnes. Bolt on a biplane-style wing and a twin-boom tail. Tow the assembly into the air behind a heavy bomber. Cast it off over enemy lines. Let...
Florence Leontine Lowe creció en una finca de Pasadena tan grandiosa que empleaba a 26 sirvientes. Se casó con un pastor a los 18 años, tuvo un hijo y, en 1928, se vistió de hombre y escapó en un barco bananero a México bajo el nombre de "Pancho". Tenía 26 años y...
Share this story There is a shipping container somewhere in the world right now that does not look like much. Steel box. Corner castings. Maybe a dent or two from a rough crossing. You have seen a million of them stacked at ports, rolling down highways on flatbeds,...
Share this story There is a sound that no aviation fan forgets. A rising howl of twin Pratt & Whitney TF30s at full afterburner, the variable-geometry wings sweeping back as the jet accelerates from a carrier deck at a rate that seems almost physically offensive —...
Aterrizó en un campo de cultivo a las afueras de Londonderry, Irlanda del Norte, el 21 de mayo de 1932, y el granjero que corrió por el césped le preguntó si venía de lejos. “De América”, respondió ella. Había estado volando durante 14 horas y 56 minutos, en un...
Share this story The aircraft was 6.07 metres long. It carried a 1,200-kilogram warhead in its nose. The cockpit held only rudimentary instruments — an airspeed indicator, an altimeter, an attitude indicator — and the controls to fire three solid-fuel rocket motors....
Bessie Coleman walked into every flying school in Chicago and was turned away from every one. The year was 1919. No American flight school would accept a student who was both Black and a woman. Most would not accept her for either reason alone. A lesser person would...
Share this story On 27 September 1956, Captain Mel Apt of the US Air Force became the first human being to fly faster than three times the speed of sound. He was at 65,000 feet over Edwards Air Force Base, in California, dropped from beneath a Boeing B-50...
The morning of 16 April 1912 was perfect — or so it seemed. Harriet Quimby stood at Folkestone, England, in her trademark plum-coloured flying suit, preparing to become the first woman to fly the English Channel. There was one problem. Fog had rolled in over the...
Share this story You know what a B-17 looks like. Four radial engines. The towering tail fin. Glass nose. Heavy-bomber Americana, stamped onto a thousand black-and-white photographs of the daylight raids over Germany. Now picture one with a fifth engine bolted to its...
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