Share this story In the mid-1950s Dassault built a small strike jet that nobody wanted. The French Air Force was not interested, and neither were the NATO air forces it had been pitched to. Then the French Navy took a look at a bigger, more powerful version, and...
Share this story On 29 July 1950, fourteen paying passengers boarded an aircraft at RAF Northolt, west of London, and flew to Paris Le Bourget. Nothing about the trip was unusual except the engines. It was the first scheduled airline flight by any turbine-powered...
Share this story Ask a Patrouille de France pilot about the jet they fly, and you may get an unexpectedly modest answer. They all come from the Rafale or the Mirage 2000, one of them told British forces broadcaster BFBS this year, and by comparison the little red,...
Share this story Few test pilots have had a take-off like Tom Morgenfeld’s on 27 January 1982. As the third full-scale development F-117 lifted off from the secret test site at Groom Lake, better known as Area 51, its nosewheel came off and bounced down the...
Share this story For twelve hours on Saturday 14 October 1961, the skies over the United States and Canada were closed to airliners. About 2,900 commercial flights were cancelled or delayed while NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command, fought off a simulated...
Share this story On 1 June 2025, trucks parked near Russian air bases thousands of kilometres from Ukraine suddenly opened their roofs. Out of wooden cabins on their flatbeds rose swarms of small quadcopter drones. Minutes later, Russian strategic bombers that had...
Share this story Long before the red-and-white Tutors of the Snowbirds, Canada had a jet team that glowed in the sun. In 1959 the Royal Canadian Air Force painted a group of Canadair Sabres gold, trimmed them in red and white, and sent them across North America as the...
Share this story On 4 July 1986, a white delta-winged jet with canards and two American engines lifted off from Istres in the south of France. Test pilot Guy Mitaux-Maurouard climbed to 11,000 metres and pushed it to Mach 1.3 on its very first flight, which lasted...
Share this story In early 1942, a pilot flying over Burbank, California, would have seen rows of houses, trees, lawns and a few parked cars. Underneath, thousands of people were building warplanes. The suburb was made of canvas, netting, chicken wire and paint, and...
Share this story On 18 April 1945, three weeks before the war in Europe ended, a Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter of Jagdverband 44 was taking off near Munich when its left wheel hit debris. The jet swerved off the runway and exploded in flames. Its pilot, Colonel...
Share this story In September 1966 a French prototype that could take off vertically flew at Mach 2.04 in level flight. Nothing that could hover had ever gone that fast. To manage it, the Dassault Mirage IIIV carried nine jet engines: one large turbofan for forward...
Share this story On 29 July 1964, a silver test aircraft from southern Germany went faster than sound. That alone was nothing new in 1964; the Bell X-1 had done it 17 years earlier. What made the EWR VJ 101 C special was that it could also take off straight up, hover,...
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