Share this story When Amy Johnson took off from Croydon on 5 May 1930 bound for Australia, she had held a pilot’s licence for ten months and had never flown further than from London to Hull. Her aircraft was a second-hand de Havilland Gipsy Moth with an open...
Partagez cette histoire. Le 2 juin 1944, des B-17 de la Quinzième Air Force bombardèrent des gares de triage en Hongrie, puis poursuivirent leur route vers l'est. Ils atterrirent en Ukraine, sur trois aérodromes soviétiques que l'Armée rouge avait remis aux Américains. C'était la première fois de la guerre que….
Share this story The runway at RAF Lyneham on the morning of 22 July 1966 held one of the least likely aeroplanes in Britain: a Lightning interceptor with no canopy, a disarmed ejection seat, its undercarriage pinned down, and a man in the cockpit who was wearing no...
Share this story The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress has been in service for seventy years and is on course to fly for a hundred. It has outlasted the Soviet Union, the propeller, and most of the engineers who designed it. And the design that made all of that possible...
Share this story Ask anyone which airliner first broke the sound barrier and they will say Concorde. They will be wrong by seven years — and by one very ordinary-looking Douglas jetliner that most people have completely forgotten. On 21 August 1961, a standard Douglas...
Partagez cette histoire. À l'automne 1980, des ingénieurs américains ont fixé trente roquettes sur un C-130 Hercules. Le plan était à la fois insensé et d'un sérieux implacable : faire atterrir le quadriréacteur dans un stade de football au cœur de Téhéran, l'immobiliser à l'intérieur du terrain, charger….
Share this story On the afternoon of 24 November 1971, a quiet man in a business suit walked up to the Northwest Orient counter in Portland, Oregon, and paid cash for a one-way ticket to Seattle. He gave his name as Dan Cooper. A few hours later he would step out of...
Le document le plus important de l'histoire des avions furtifs n'a pas été rédigé en Californie ni sur un aérodrome secret en plein désert. Il a été écrit à Moscou, en russe, par un physicien soviétique – et l'Union soviétique a autorisé sa diffusion à l'étranger car elle estimait que ce travail était sans intérêt….
Share this story For months, Europe’s most ambitious fighter programme had a hole in the middle of it: the money. On July 3, 2026, that hole was filled. The United Kingdom, Italy and Japan signed a £4.6 billion ($6.1 billion) contract to push their sixth-generation...
Share this story Saturday morning, 28 July 1945. New York is wrapped in fog so thick that the top third of the Empire State Building has simply vanished. At 9:40 a.m., office workers on the 79th floor hear a sound no office worker should ever hear: aircraft engines,...
Share this story For three decades during the Cold War, Britain’s nuclear deterrent rested on the wings of three extraordinary aircraft: the Vickers Valiant, the Avro Vulcan, and the Handley Page Victor. Known collectively as the V-bombers, they were designed to...
Share this story It is the morning of 5 May 1945, on the wooded slopes of Gearhart Mountain in southern Oregon. The Reverend Archie Mitchell has driven his pregnant wife, Elsie, and five children from his Sunday school up for a picnic. As Archie parks the car, the...
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