Share this story For weeks it was described in the careful language of an open investigation: a “suspicious object,” a “security incident,” a drone of unknown origin. On Tuesday, Germany dropped the hedging. Standing before reporters in Berlin,...
Share this story In the early 1950s, neutral Sweden set out to build a supersonic interceptor unlike anything else in the world — a fighter with a strange, folded ‘double-delta’ wing. It was such a radical idea that no one could be sure the shape...
Share this story When ten jets pour off the top of a loop trailing green, white and red smoke, an entire country looks up. The Frecce Tricolori — the Tricolour Arrows — are Italy’s national aerobatic team and, by sheer number of aircraft, the biggest...
Share this story When Emmanuel Macron flew to Stockholm at the end of August, the headline deal was maritime: four French frigates for the Swedish navy, a multi-billion-euro vote of confidence in NATO’s newest member. But tucked alongside it was something that...
Share this story Before dawn on Tuesday, sirens and phone alerts woke residents across eight regions of Estonia. A drone had crossed the country’s southeastern frontier, and a second was tracking toward the border city of Narva. On the runway at Ämari Air...
Share this story Before noon on 31 August 2026, about 30 kilometres north of the little Polish seaside town of Łeba, Polish fighters slid into position alongside a four-engined Russian turboprop and escorted it along the coast. The aircraft was an Ilyushin Il-20...
Share this story Stand at the window of any airport terminal today and play a game: try to tell the airliners apart by shape alone. This is harder nowadays than it used to be. Boeing or Airbus, regional jet or long-haul giant, they are all the same basic object...
Share this story On the grey afternoon of 12 February 1942, six ancient-looking biplanes lumbered off the runway at RAF Manston, near Dover, and turned out over a freezing sea. They were Fairey Swordfish — fabric-and-wire torpedo bombers with open cockpits and a...
Share this story It was meant to be an ordinary Saturday morning in southern Hungary. Instead, a light aircraft lifted off from the grass at Kalocsa with a man at the controls who had no business flying it, and pointed its nose toward the one place in the country...
Share this story When people list the great fighters of the Second World War, they name the Spitfire, the Mustang, the Bf 109, the Zero. They rarely mention the Macchi C.202 Folgore — and that is an injustice. In the right hands the sleek Italian fighter could...
Share this story In the mid-1930s, a French carpenter’s dream put aviation within reach of the ordinary man. Henri Mignet’s Flying Flea — the Pou-du-Ciel, or “Louse of the Sky” — was a tiny wooden aeroplane that anyone could build...
Share this story On the evening of 10 May 1941, the third most powerful man in Nazi Germany climbed into a Messerschmitt Bf 110 fighter, alone, and pointed it at Scotland. No orders. No co-pilot. No authorisation from Hitler. Just Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer,...
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