Share this story At 05:30 on 25 October 1983, the first Army Rangers stepped out of a Hercules over the south-western tip of Grenada. They jumped from about 500 feet, low enough to stay under the anti-aircraft fire. Below them lay a half-finished runway, blocked with...
Share this story Shortly after noon on Saturday, 24 October 2026, a small plane over Palm Beach, Florida, picked up an unwanted escort. A NORAD F-16 intercepted the general aviation aircraft at about 12:20 p.m. local time after it flew into the FAA Temporary Flight...
Share this story About 200 people gathered at 17 Wing Winnipeg on Saturday, 24 October 2026, to say goodbye to an old friend. Backdropped by a grey CC-130H Hercules, the Royal Canadian Air Force held a retirement ceremony for the last of its H-model Hercules, the...
Share this story Shortly before midnight on 14 May 1982, Royal Navy Sea Kings clattered in low over the dark, wind-scoured grass of a small island north of West Falkland. Out of them climbed about 45 men of D Squadron, 22 Special Air Service, each loaded with mortar...
Share this story In the last week of January 1991, American AWACS crews over the Gulf watched something nobody had predicted. Iraqi jets were taking off, staying low and running hard, not towards the coalition and not towards friendly Jordan, but east, towards Iran....
Share this story On 10 January 1956, ground crews in Turkey and West Germany let go of the first nine of hundreds of giant plastic balloons. Each one carried a camera gondola about the size of a refrigerator. The cover story said they were studying the weather. In...
Share this story On 14 April 1956, three silver jets climbed out of Thule, Greenland, and turned towards the top of the world. Their pilots were heading for Noril’sk, a closed Soviet nickel-mining city 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Two air refuellings...
Share this story Four hundred feet above a moonlit field in occupied France, a bomber painted glossy black slows to just above stalling speed. Below, three flashlights in a row and a fourth at a right angle mark the spot. In the belly, a man in a padded jump suit sits...
Share this story Just before four o’clock on the afternoon of 23 June 1952, US Navy Skyraiders tipped into their dives over the Yalu River. Below them sat the Sui-ho Dam, one of the biggest hydroelectric plants on earth. Across the river, less than 40 miles...
Share this story Seventy miles south of Hanoi, a steel bridge 540 feet long sat on a single concrete pier in the middle of the Song Ma river. It carried the only railway in the North Vietnamese panhandle, with a road lane on either side. Locals called it Ham Rong: the...
Share this story At 10:27 on the morning of 24 October 1944, eight dive bombers from the carrier USS Intrepid tipped over above the Sibuyan Sea and went for the biggest target any of their crews had ever seen. Below them steamed Musashi, one of the two heaviest...
Share this story After the hottest summer Britain has ever recorded, the government has decided that some wildfires are simply out of reach for firefighters on foot. Its answer is in the hangars of the Royal Air Force: the twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook and the A400M Atlas...
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