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 July it lifted a...
Le 24 novembre 1961, une machine ressemblant à deux hélicoptères boulonnés aux extrémités des ailes d'un avion de transport a soulevé 16,4 tonnes à deux kilomètres et demi d'altitude, établi six records du monde en un seul vol, et atterri trente minutes plus tard avec son voyant de carburant allumé...
Every fighter jet has the same fatal dependency: a long strip of concrete. Destroy the runway and the aircraft is a very expensive ornament. In the early 1950s, with NATO planners assuming their handful of airfields in Germany would be atomised in the opening hours of...
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 people died in a...
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 take-off, and a fourth...
At about seven thousand five hundred feet over the swamp forests of the Soviet Far East, a young woman clipped on a parachute, opened a hatch in the glazed nose of a bomber, and jumped out into freezing air because the alternative was to be crushed when the aircraft...
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 exist. On 17...
Two Californian companies announced this week that they are going to build an autonomous aircraft together. They did not say what it is, who it is for, what it costs, or when it flies. Ordinarily that would be a press release to ignore. This one is worth a second...
The video is short and, if you have any imagination at all, deeply unpleasant. A Mi-8 descends towards a public highway on Sakhalin Island, main rotor blades sweeping low over a truck that is still driving along the road. Then the helicopter goes off the road and into...
Un avion dont l'envergure correspondait aux trois quarts de celle d'un Airbus A320 et qui pesait le poids de deux adultes a décollé d'une piste en Saxe-Anhalt le 2 septembre, a effectué un large circuit prudent pendant soixante-dix minutes, puis a atterri. Il n'a jamais dépassé 180 mètres d'altitude. Ce n'est pas...
The Royal Air Force flies several aircraft that it cannot refuel. This is not a secret, and it is not new, but it is faintly absurd, and it has finally produced an answer. In a written answer on 2 September, Minister of State for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke...
La Russie présentera la semaine prochaine son avion de chasse d'exportation sur les côtes égyptiennes, et il s'agira d'un appareil jamais dévoilé auparavant. Rostec, le conglomérat d'État russe spécialisé dans la défense, annonce que le Su-57E sera en vol au salon aéronautique international d'El Alamein, qui se tiendra du 8 au 10 septembre.
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