At 10:56 PM Eastern time on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong placed his left boot on the surface of the Moon and said words that 600 million people — one in five people alive on Earth — were listening to live. The signal took 1.26 seconds to travel from the lunar surface...
Quick FactsNationalitySoviet 🇷🇺Aerial Victories59 (officially credited)Aircraft FlownMiG-3, Yak-1, P-39 AiracobraWarsWorld War II (Eastern Front)Born / Died6 Mar 1913 – 13 Nov 1985 (age 72)Unit16th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment Stamp of Russia 2013 No 1675...
In 1965, Pan American World Airways president Juan Trippe phoned Boeing president Bill Allen and asked whether Boeing could build an aircraft twice the size of anything currently flying. Allen said he would look into it. The two men then did something remarkable for...
In the summer of 1940, roughly 3,000 RAF fighter pilots stood between Nazi Germany and the conquest of Britain. Against them, the Luftwaffe fielded over 2,600 aircraft and some of the most experienced combat aviators in the world. For four months — from July to...
On October 24, 2003, British Airways flight BA002 touched down at London Heathrow for the last time. As it taxied in, the crew made an announcement: this was Concorde’s final commercial flight. The passengers — who had each paid around £8,000 for a seat — stood...
Quick FactsNationalityGerman 🇩🇪Aerial Victories158 (151 in North Africa alone)Aircraft FlownBf 109E/FWarsWorld War II (North Africa)Born / Died13 Dec 1919 – 30 Sep 1942 (age 22)UnitJG 27 Bundesarchiv Bild 146-2006-0122, Hans-Joachim Marseille — via Wikimedia Commons...
The standard defensive manoeuvre for an SR-71 Blackbird when it detected a surface-to-air missile launch was simple: accelerate. At Mach 3.3 and 85,000 feet, acceleration was sufficient. No SR-71 was ever shot down. In over 3,500 operational missions, spanning 24...
Quick FactsNationalityAustrian/German 🇦🇹Aerial Victories258 (including 3 in Me 262 jet)Aircraft FlownFw 190A, Bf 109, Me 262 (first jet ace)WarsWorld War IIBorn / Died7 Dec 1920 – 8 Nov 1944 (age 23)UnitJG 54, Kommando Nowotny Walter Nowotny (portrait) — via Wikimedia...
On the evening of October 12, 1947, test pilot Chuck Yeager went horse riding in the Mojave Desert and fell off, breaking two ribs. Two days later, in severe pain and with his ribs tightly taped, he crawled into the cockpit of a Bell X-1 rocket plane, used a sawed-off...
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