Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
Somewhere over the Nevada desert on a July morning in 1957, five American officers stood in the open, looked straight up, and waited for a nuclear weapon to go off directly above their heads. There was no bunker. There was no lead shielding. There was a hand-lettered...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
Three de Havilland DH.108 Swallows were ever built. Each one, in turn, killed the man flying it. That is not a curse or a legend — it is simply the record of one of the most beautiful and lethal experimental aircraft Britain ever put into the air. The Swallow...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
Shooting down a ballistic missile with a laser sounds like science fiction. For a brief period around 2010, it was an American aircraft parked on a runway in California. The Boeing YAL-1 was a 747 with a megawatt-class laser built into its fuselage and a swivelling...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
On 27 June 1969, a North American B-25 Mitchell lifted off from Fairbanks, Alaska, lost an engine moments later, and came down wheels-up on a sandbar in the middle of the Tanana River. Everyone walked away. The bomber did not. Recovering it would have cost more than...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
Imagine strapping into a fighter, climbing to altitude, and then flying straight at a bomber whose gunners have been ordered to open fire on you. Not blanks. Not a camera. Real bullets, aimed at your aircraft, on purpose. Now imagine doing it two or three times a day...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
En 1964, la France intégra le club nucléaire selon ses propres conditions. Refusant de dépendre des armes américaines ou britanniques, elle construisit un élégant avion supersonique delta pour transporter sa propre bombe : un biplace bimoteur de compétition capable de foncer vers Moscou à deux fois la vitesse de….
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
Most Vietnam-era warplanes are long gone — melted into scrap or bolted to a museum pole. The OV-10 Bronco keeps refusing to leave. Built to fight guerrillas in the 1960s, the funny little twin-boom turboprop has come roaring back again and again: over the Mekong...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
By a decades-old agreement between the U.S. services, the Army isn’t really supposed to fly its own combat aeroplanes — that job belongs to the Air Force. The Grumman OV-1 Mohawk is the great exception: a stubby, triple-tailed, bug-eyed turboprop built for...
Monde de l'aviation, Histoire et légendes
Everyone remembers the Airbus A380 as the great double-decker of the skies. Almost nobody remembers that France built one two generations earlier. In 1953, Air France put into service a broad-shouldered, four-engined airliner with two full passenger decks and a lift...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
It looked like a punchline — a helicopter with its fuselage bent upward in the middle like a piece of fruit, a fat rotor spinning at each end. Soldiers called it the Flying Banana, and they meant it with affection. But the Piasecki H-21 was no joke. It pulled...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
Fin 1944, l'Allemagne nazie était à court de presque tout ce dont une armée de l'air a besoin, et surtout de carburant. Aussi, lorsque le Dr Alexander Lippisch, pionnier des ailes delta et concepteur du Me 163 Komet à propulsion fusée, esquissa un intercepteur supersonique, il le dota d'un moteur….
Monde de l'aviation, Histoire et légendes
Dans les premières minutes d'Octopussy (1983), James Bond, incarné par Roger Moore, s'échappe d'un hangar en explosion à bord d'un jet à peine plus grand que lui, échappe à un missile à tête chercheuse, puis arrive en roue libre à une station-service et lance, impassible : “ Faites le plein, s'il vous plaît. ” La blague fonctionne….
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