Share this story At 10:12 on the morning of 28 December 1944, a Japanese A6M Zero dived through anti-aircraft fire and crashed into the Liberty ship SS John Burke in the Mindanao Sea. For a few seconds there was only smoke. Then her cargo of ammunition went up, and...
Share this story At 15:45 on Tuesday, 2 October 2001, Swissair chairman and CEO Mario Corti stood in front of the cameras and announced that the airline would stop flying. By then, jets carrying the Swiss cross were already sitting on aprons from Zurich to New York,...
Share this story Most passengers get a window seat and a view of the wing. On Monday morning, 28 September, the passenger in the Air France A321 from Lourdes to Metz got the cockpit, a radio microphone, and two Rafales flying about 50 metres off the nose. Pope Leo XIV...
Share this story Turkey will not receive its first Eurofighter Typhoon until 2030. Its first Typhoon pilots, however, are already in Lincolnshire. On 27 September, the Royal Air Force announced that two Turkish Air Force pilots have started conversion training with 29...
Share this story Somewhere over the Libyan desert on the morning of 15 April 1986, the reconnaissance officer in the back seat of an SR-71 called out a warning to his pilot. Walter Watson was seeing missile launch signals on his defensive panel. Up front, Major Brian...
Share this story At 5:17 in the morning of 8 May 1927, a white biplane staggered off the grass at Le Bourget, so heavy with fuel that it barely cleared the trees at the end of the field. In the open cockpit sat two of France’s great airmen: Charles Nungesser,...
Share this story Nine red jets pull up in front of the crowd, and on a word from the leader, “Smoke on, go,” thick white trails pour from their tails. Seconds later, red and blue join the white, and the Union Flag is painted across the sky. Display smoke...
Share this story Manchester does not get many jumbo jets any more. On Saturday afternoon, 26 September, it got one it had not planned for, and by Sunday there were two of them parked side by side on the ramp. Lufthansa flight LH470 from Frankfurt to Toronto was...
Share this story Twice an hour, for three minutes, the North Atlantic fell silent. At a quarter past and a quarter to, every wireless operator on every ship within reach of 500 kilohertz stopped transmitting, pressed his headphones a little harder against his ears,...
Share this story At 8:40 on the morning of 15 June 1919, a big biplane came out of the low cloud over County Galway. The pilot saw a flat green field near the Marconi wireless station at Clifden and put the aircraft down. The field was a bog. The wheels sank, the nose...
Share this story Picture the job description. You sit strapped into a fighter perched on a rail over the bow of a cargo ship, somewhere in the North Atlantic. When an enemy bomber appears, rockets fire you off the front of the ship. You fight. And then, because there...
Share this story On Thursday 7 September 1944, Duncan Sandys, the British minister in charge of countering Germany’s secret weapons, told the press that the flying-bomb threat to London was essentially finished. “Except possibly for a few last shots, the...
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