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 Stand behind a jet at full power and the experience is less like hearing a machine than being shoved by one. A modern airliner engine can produce more than 100,000 pounds of thrust from a device with essentially no reciprocating parts — just a...
Share this story Kelly Johnson gave the Skunk Works the SR-71 and the U-2. But it was his successor, a chubby, wisecracking thermodynamicist named Ben Rich, who took an idea most engineers thought was absurd — an aircraft you couldn’t see on radar —...
Condividi questa storia Per quasi un secolo, un aereo di linea è stato una macchina fatta di alluminio: centinaia di migliaia di lamiere, telai e rivetti imbullonati a un tubo di metallo. Poi Boeing ha lanciato il 787 Dreamliner, e la costruzione più fondamentale del settore...
Share this story Here is a problem every fighter pilot eventually faces: you are behind an enemy jet, you have the advantage — and you are going too fast. Keep pulling and you will rocket right past him, handing him your tail. Ease off and he escapes. The...
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...
Condividi questa storia Non puoi vederlo, ed è proprio questo che lo rende pericoloso. Dietro ogni aereo che crea una scia di sollevamento si formano due invisibili vortici d'aria rotante: la turbolenza di scia. Vola nella scia di un grande jet nel momento sbagliato e un aereo più piccolo...
Share this story Before he was a reclusive billionaire, before the movies and the mania, Howard Hughes was a young man obsessed with going fast. In 1935 that obsession took the shape of a single, gorgeous silver aeroplane — the Hughes H-1 Racer — and with...
Share this story He never became a general, never commanded a wing, and spent much of his career infuriating his superiors. Yet John Boyd may have shaped modern air combat more than any pilot who ever lived. He rewrote how fighters are flown, how they are designed,...
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...
Condividi questa storia Di solito si annuncia con un botto: uno schiocco secco, simile a quello di un cannone, proveniente dal motore, a volte una lingua di fuoco che esce dalla presa d'aria o dallo scarico e un calo di spinta da far venire il mal di stomaco. Per un passeggero sembra che il motore sia esploso. Di solito, però...
Share this story Two fighters close head-on at a combined speed near 1,000 knots. For a heartbeat they flash past each other, close enough for the pilots to see helmets in the other cockpit. Then the real fight begins. That instant has a name: the merge. What a pilot...
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