On the evening of May 21, 1927, a single-engine monoplane appeared out of the darkness over Le Bourget airfield near Paris. The crowd waiting on the ground numbered 150,000 people — the largest gathering in French history to that point. When Charles Lindbergh stepped...
Share this story On October 6, 1971, an aircraft appeared over the Sinai Peninsula that no Israeli fighter could catch. It flew at Mach 3.2 — faster than a rifle bullet — at an altitude above 24,000 metres. Israeli Air Force F-4 Phantoms scrambled to intercept. They...
Share this story Two days before the most important flight in the history of aviation, Captain Chuck Yeager went horseback riding with his wife, Glennis, near their home at Muroc Army Air Field in the California desert. The horse threw him. He hit the ground hard and...
Share this story No supersonic fighter in history has been built in greater numbers. No jet has served in more air forces, fought in more wars, or lasted longer in frontline service. The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 — NATO codename Fishbed — first flew in 1955, entered...
Share this story There is only one left that can fly. Out of the hundreds of PB4Y-2 Privateers that the US Navy operated across the Pacific during the final years of World War II, a single airworthy example survives — based in Casa Grande, Arizona, maintained by a...
On June 15, 1919, at 8:40 in the morning, a Vickers Vimy biplane with two Rolls-Royce Eagle engines and no radio contact with the outside world nosed down through the clouds over the west coast of Ireland — and drove itself straight into a bog at Derrygimlagh, near...
Share this story On October 3, 1967, test pilot William J. “Pete” Knight climbed into a black, dart-shaped aircraft bolted to the wing of a B-52 bomber. At 45,000 feet over the Mojave Desert, the B-52 released him. Knight lit the rocket engine. In the next 84 seconds,...
Share this story On September 6, 1976, a Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat interceptor appeared on Japanese radar screens without warning. It was flying fast, low, and heading straight for Hakodate Airport on the northern island of Hokkaido. The pilot had not filed a flight plan....
In August 1914, when the first European armies crossed their borders and the Great War began, military aircraft were used for one purpose: watching. Unarmed reconnaissance planes flew over enemy lines, their observers sketching troop positions and supply routes. The...
Share this story On the morning of April 18, 1942 — four months and eleven days after Pearl Harbor — sixteen B-25 Mitchell medium bombers launched from the pitching deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. They were headed for Tokyo. None of them had enough fuel to...
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