Share this story In the spring of 1942 the brand-new Avro Lancaster had barely gone to war when Bomber Command sent twelve of them on a mission that bordered on suicidal: fly in broad daylight, at treetop height, a thousand miles across occupied Europe to bomb a...
Share this story On the morning of 21 March 1945, twenty de Havilland Mosquitos came in over Copenhagen at rooftop height, so low that Danes on the streets could see the crews’ faces. Their target was the Shellhus — the Gestapo’s headquarters in the...
Partagez cette histoire. Certains avions sont abandonnés parce qu'ils ne fonctionnent pas. Le Douglas F5D Skylancer a été annulé car il était trop performant, trop tardif et construit par la mauvaise entreprise. Il a franchi le mur du son dès son premier vol, sa maniabilité était exceptionnelle et il a impressionné tous les pilotes qui l'ont essayé….
Share this story On November 6, 1945, an American fighter turned onto final approach to a small escort carrier off California when its engine quit. The pilot did not bail out. He kept coming, touched down, and caught a wire — and in doing so made the first...
Partagez cette histoire. Prenez un F-16 Fighting Falcon, supprimez son aile et remplacez-la par une immense aile delta en forme de flèche qui double presque sa surface. Allongez le fuselage, augmentez sa capacité de carburant de 65 % et emportez des bombes depuis vingt-sept points d'emport. Le résultat : un vol plus long, une capacité de charge accrue….
Share this story When the Grumman X-29 stunned airshow crowds in the 1980s with wings that swept the wrong way, and again when Russia rolled out the Su-47 Berkut, both were hailed as radical leaps. Neither was first. A German bomber had already flown on forward-swept...
Share this story The most famous British bomber of the Second World War began life as one of its worst. Before the Avro Lancaster hauled bouncing bombs to the Ruhr dams and Tallboys onto the Tirpitz, there was the Avro Manchester — a twin-engine heavy so plagued...
Share this story Three months after Pearl Harbor, two enormous Japanese flying boats lifted off from a lagoon in the Marshall Islands and set course for Hawaii. Their plan was almost absurd: fly nearly 2,000 miles across empty ocean, meet a submarine at a deserted...
Share this story Late in the afternoon of April 18, 1943 — Palm Sunday — a wall of German transport planes crawled north-east across the Mediterranean at wavetop height, so low their propellers kicked spray off the swells. There were about ninety of them,...
Share this story The most valuable spy near a naval exercise may not be a submarine or a satellite. It may be the container ship steaming quietly past on the horizon, stacked with boxes and bristling with antennas that look exactly like every other merchant vessel...
Share this story Two years ago Riyadh Air was a logo and a promise. This week it flew its first passengers to Bangkok — the newest thread in a network that Saudi Arabia intends to stretch across the planet.On September 2, the kingdom’s from-scratch flag...
Share this story A French-built fighter took on fuel from a Chinese tanker over Egypt this week — and in doing so quietly rewrote a small piece of the aerial map. It is, as far as anyone can tell, the first time a Chinese Y-20 tanker has been publicly documented...
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