Share this story It is a little after dawn on 15 August 1945, and a flight of Grumman F6F Hellcats is droning north over the haze of Tokyo Bay. In the cockpits are young U.S. Navy pilots of Air Group 88, launched from the carrier USS Yorktown to strike airfields near...
Share this story For sixty years, one of the most welcome sounds on an American aircraft carrier was not a fighter. It was the drone of two big turboprops on approach. The C-2 Greyhound brought the mail, the spare parts, the fresh food, and the sailors heading home on...
Share this story The future carrier air wing will not be all pilots. The U.S. Navy is pressing ahead on a carrier-based “loyal wingman” — an uncrewed combat aircraft built to fly alongside crewed fighters, carry sensors and weapons, and go first into...
Share this story The Marine general who runs the F-35 program walked into a Senate hearing this week and said the quiet part out loud: the most expensive weapons program in history has outgrown the system built to keep it flying.It landed weeks after a Government...
Share this story On 24 June 2026, the U.S. government signed one of the largest missile-defense checks in its history and handed it to a single company for a single job: build interceptors, and build them faster than America has ever built them before. The award to...
Nel settembre del 1944, con i bombardieri alleati che riducevano in macerie le città tedesche e la Luftwaffe che perdeva piloti esperti a un ritmo insostenibile, il Ministero dell'Aeronautica del Reich emanò una delle specifiche più disperate della storia dell'aviazione: progettare un caccia a reazione che...
Il 15 aprile 1988, un aereo di linea Tupolev Tu-154 modificato decollò dall'aeroporto Zhukovsky di Mosca con uno dei suoi tre motori alimentato a idrogeno liquido. Salì in quota, compì un circuito di volo e atterrò senza incidenti. L'aereo fu designato Tu-155 e...
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...
The Germans had a word for it. They always do. When Luftwaffe pilots talked about the Panavia Tornado, they called it the eierlegende Wollmilchsau — the “egg-laying wool-milk pig.” A mythical creature that does everything: lays eggs, produces wool, gives...
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...
Share this story RAND analysis argues that oil shortages alone can grind Russia’s war machine to a halt — just as strikes on fuel infrastructure crippled Nazi Germany in the Second World War. An army that runs out of fuel cannot keep fighting.Michael Bohnert —...
Recent Comments