On the night of 11 November 1940, twenty-one Fairey Swordfish biplanes — fabric-covered, open-cockpit torpedo bombers with a top speed of 139 miles per hour — attacked the Italian fleet at anchor in Taranto harbour. When they were done, three battleships were sinking,...
We have written before about the F-8 Crusader’s legendary status as the “Last of the Gunfighters” — the Navy jet that went to war over Vietnam armed primarily with four 20 mm Colt Mk 12 cannon when every other fighter in the fleet was transitioning...
On 2 March 2026, two Iranian Su-24 Fencer tactical bombers were hurtling across the Persian Gulf at just 80 feet above the water. Their targets: Al Udeid Air Base — the nerve centre of US military operations in the Middle East — and the Ras Laffan liquefied natural...
When twin earthquakes ripped through northern Venezuela on 24 June — a magnitude 7.2 foreshock followed 39 seconds later by a catastrophic magnitude 7.5 mainshock — the country’s fragile infrastructure collapsed in minutes. Buildings pancaked across Caracas....
Share this story It is just after ten in the morning on 19 June 1944, and Lieutenant (junior grade) Alexander Vraciu is hanging in the blue over the Philippine Sea, hood back, oxygen mask tight, hunting. Below and ahead of his Grumman F6F Hellcat, a loose gaggle of...
Share this story The fire that broke out before dawn on Sunday in a refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region was, by now, a familiar sight. Columns of black smoke climbed kilometres into low cloud over Slavyansk-na-Kubani, a stone’s throw from annexed Crimea....
Share this story It is mid-morning on 8 June 2026 at Ellington Field in Houston, and Harry “D-Day” Daye is strapping into a machine that has not left the ground in seven years. The ramp smells of jet fuel and Texas heat. Behind him sits Jerod Flohr, one of the...
Share this story It is a Saturday morning over the East Sea, and on a Korean radar screen the blips appear early — a cluster of them, more than ten military aircraft, Chinese and Russian, moving in sequence toward the edge of the country’s watch. Inside an...
Share this story On the morning of 2 September 1958, a four-engined transport drones eastward through the clear sky near the Turkish-Soviet border. To anyone who glanced up, it is just a C-130 Hercules — an unglamorous cargo hauler. It is not. Tail number 60528...
Share this story At Aero India 2025, on a warm February morning at Yelahanka Air Force Station near Bengaluru, a small boy tips his head all the way back. Above him a Russian Su-57 hauls itself into a vertical climb, rolls over the top, and falls back toward the...
Share this story On the morning of 28 June 1939, twenty-two extraordinarily lucky people walked down a pier at Port Washington on Long Island and climbed aboard what looked like an ocean liner with wings. Captain R.O.D. Sullivan ran up the four big engines, and the...
Share this story It was a bright, ordinary afternoon in Florida. At about two o’clock on 5 December 1945, five Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers rumbled off the runway at Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale on a routine navigation exercise. Fourteen men, a clear sky, a...
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