Flat Spin: The F-14 Mode That Ends in Ejection
Share this story The most famous three minutes in aviation cinema are a flat spin. An F-14 departs, settles into a flat rotation, and the crew ejects into the canopy.The remarkable thing about that scene is not the drama. It is that the US Navy’s own flight...
ShinMaywa US-2: The Flying Boat That Lands in 3-Metre Waves
Share this story On 21 June 2013, a yacht called Eolus struck a sperm whale roughly 1,200 kilometres south-east of Miyagi prefecture and began to sink. Two men took to a life raft: a Japanese newscaster and a blind sailor attempting to cross the Pacific.A US-2...
Energy-Maneuverability: How John Boyd Rewrote the Dogfight
Share this story At Nellis Air Force Base in the late 1950s, an instructor kept a standing bet with anyone who wanted it. Take up a position on his tail, the classic winning position in air combat. He would be reversed and behind you inside forty seconds, or he would...
Ground Effect: The Cushion of Air That Isn’t Really There
Share this story Every pilot has felt it. The aeroplane is descending toward the runway, the flare begins, and somewhere in the last few feet the whole machine seems to change its mind about landing. It floats. It sits there, refusing to settle, eating runway.The...
Radar di inseguimento del terreno: volare a 200 piedi di altitudine al buio
Condividi questa storia L'abbattimento dell'U-2 sopra Sverdlovsk nel 1960 pose fine a una controversia. L'altitudine non era più un rifugio sicuro. Se volevi raggiungere un obiettivo difeso, dovevi passare sotto il radar piuttosto che sopra di esso, di notte, in condizioni meteorologiche avverse, a poche centinaia di metri di altitudine.
Turbulenza di scia: il tornado invisibile che si cela dietro ogni aereo di linea.
Condividi questa storia Il 7 gennaio 2017, un Bombardier Challenger 604 stava sorvolando il Mar Arabico a 34.000 piedi di altitudine, a circa 500 miglia nautiche dalla terraferma più vicina. Un Airbus A380 della Emirates è passato a 1.000 piedi di altezza nella direzione opposta, in modo del tutto legale. Quarantasette...
Mach Tuck: la picchiata che quasi uccise i primi piloti di jet.
Condividi questa storia Nell'ottobre del 1947, Chuck Yeager tirò indietro la cloche del Bell X-1 a Mach 0,94 e non accadde nulla. L'aereo continuò esattamente come prima, come se la cloche non fosse collegata a niente. Spense il motore a razzo. Mentre l'X-1...
Stallo del compressore: perché un motore a reazione emette un incendio
Share this story A jet engine is a machine for keeping air moving in one direction. When it briefly stops doing that, the result is spectacular: a bang like an explosion, a sheet of flame out of the tailpipe, sometimes out of the intake as well, and an aircraft that...
NASA Goes Shopping for a New Jet
Share this story For more than sixty years, the sound of an astronaut heading to work has been the shriek of a Northrop T-38 Talon. Now NASA is starting to think about what comes next. The agency’s Johnson Space Center has opened market research for a modern jet...
The B-52s Are Coming Back to Spain
Share this story The United States is quietly building more room for its heavy bombers in southern Spain. Under a new military-construction plan, the U.S. Air Force wants to expand the apron at Morón Air Base near Seville so it can park up to nine B-52...
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