Partagez cette histoire. Deux mois après qu'un missile soviétique abattit Gary Powers et son U-2, un autre avion américain patrouillait aux confins du même empire. Le 1er juillet 1960, un Boeing RB-47H effectuait une mission de reconnaissance électronique solitaire à haute altitude au-dessus de….
Share this story The sky over Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941 belonged almost entirely to the attackers. Almost. While battleships burned and most American aircraft were destroyed on the ground, a handful of pilots managed to get airborne and fight...
Share this story Most fighter aces fight one enemy. Witold Urbanowicz fought two of history’s most feared air forces — the Luftwaffe over England and the Imperial Japanese over China — and beat them both. The Polish pilot did it while exiled from a...
Share this story He wore a cravat instead of a regulation tie, no rank insignia, and often a borrowed uniform. He nearly washed out of flight training. And yet Adrian “Warby” Warburton became the most decorated photo-reconnaissance pilot in the Royal Air...
Share this story In 1941, the biggest movie star to put on a uniform was not sent to make training films or sell war bonds — though the Army very much wanted him to. James Stewart, fresh off an Academy Award, wanted to fly bombers into Germany. And he had to...
Share this story Long before he invented Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory or the giant peach, Roald Dahl was lying in the Libyan desert with a fractured skull, blood in his eyes, and a burning biplane a few yards away. He was 24 years old, and he had just...
Share this story On the afternoon of 7 July 1946, the richest man in America climbed into an unproven silver aircraft and took off alone, against the advice of everyone around him. Just over an hour later, Howard Hughes was lying in the burning wreckage of a Beverly...
Share this story In December 1931, a cocky 21-year-old RAF pilot named Douglas Bader tried a low, showy roll in his biplane, clipped a wingtip on the grass, and crashed. Surgeons took his right leg above the knee that day, and his left below the knee months later. His...
Partagez cette histoire. L'après-midi du 26 juillet 1959, le lieutenant-colonel des Marines William Rankin volait à 14 300 mètres d'altitude lorsque le moteur unique de son chasseur s'arrêta dans un grincement strident. Il leva les bras, tira sur les poignées d'éjection et se propulsa hors du cockpit.
Partagez cette histoire. Le matin du 12 août 1944, un aviateur naval de 29 ans monta à bord d'un bombardier Liberator dépouillé de ses canons et rempli d'explosifs, d'une aile à l'autre. Il n'était pas obligé d'être là. Il avait accompli son tour de service et mérité son brevet….
Share this story At the height of the Battle of Britain, with his fighter pilots being blamed for the bombers falling out of the sky, a young German ace was asked by the head of the Luftwaffe what he needed to turn things around. Adolf Galland, cigar clenched in his...
Share this story For fifty-nine years, every September, the high desert north of Reno filled with a sound you felt in your chest before you heard it: the shriek of Merlin engines wound past their limits, warbirds built to kill fascism now screaming around pylons a few...
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