Three Minutes to the Hudson

Three Minutes to the Hudson

Ninety seconds before he put an Airbus A320 into a river, Chesley Sullenberger said something entirely ordinary. It was 3:26 in the afternoon on 15 January 2009, the aircraft was climbing away from LaGuardia, and he looked left out of the window. “What a view of...
The Publicity Photo That Killed the Valkyrie

The Publicity Photo That Killed the Valkyrie

It was supposed to be a photograph. Five gleaming aircraft, all powered by the same company’s engines, tucked into tight formation over the California desert for a publicity shot. Twenty minutes later, two of them were falling out of the sky, and two of...
Colonel Toon: The Ace Who Never Was

Colonel Toon: The Ace Who Never Was

He had thirteen American kills, a colonel’s rank, and a name that made young U.S. pilots go quiet: Colonel Toon. He was North Vietnam’s deadliest ace, the ghost every Navy flier feared meeting over Haiphong. There was only one problem with the legend of...
The Last Stand of Taffy 3

The Last Stand of Taffy 3

Just after dawn on October 25, 1944, lookouts on a cluster of small American ships off the island of Samar saw something that should not have been there: pagoda masts on the horizon. The most powerful surface fleet Japan could still put to sea — battleships led...