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 Mud Lake, Nevada, the B-52 released him. Knight lit the rocket engine. In the next 140.7...
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...
Share this story Two small, strange-looking aircraft were built in total secrecy at Lockheed’s Skunk Works facility in Burbank, California, between 1976 and 1977. They were angular, faceted, and looked like something a geometry student had folded out of sheet...
Share this story In 1920, Bessie Coleman walked into every flight school in the United States that she could find. Every single one turned her away. She was Black. She was a woman. In Jim Crow America, that was two disqualifications, and neither was negotiable. So she...
Share this story Eugene Jacques Bullard was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1895 — the grandson of enslaved people, the son of a man who had barely escaped a lynch mob. By the time he was eleven years old, he had decided that his future lay anywhere but the American...
Share this story It was ugly. It leaked. It trailed a filthy black smoke plume that could be spotted from thirty miles away. The cockpit was cramped, the controls were heavy, and early models did not even carry a gun — a decision that got pilots killed over Vietnam....
Share this story On February 2, 1970, somewhere over the frozen plains of Montana, 1st Lieutenant Gary Foust of the 71st Fighter Interceptor Squadron had a problem that no amount of skill could solve. His F-106A Delta Dart — a supersonic interceptor designed to hunt...
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