Share this story In October 1978 a huge freighter lifted off from Rolls-Royce’s airfield at Hucknall with a problem its crew could not fix. The flaps had dropped on take-off and would not come back up. So pilots Bob Reynolds and ‘Rocky’ Oliver flew...
Share this story On 18 July 1965, Commander Jeremiah Denton of attack squadron VA-75 was leading a strike over North Vietnam in a Grumman A-6A Intruder when his aircraft was hit near Thanh Hoa. He and his bombardier-navigator, Bill Tschudy, ejected and were captured...
Share this story On 15 April 1928, a single-engined monoplane lifted off a scraped-out strip of snow at Point Barrow, Alaska, and pointed its nose across the top of the world. Aboard were the Australian explorer Hubert Wilkins and his pilot, Carl Ben Eielson. Their...
Share this story Early on the morning of 8 January 1944, busloads of generals and political guests pulled up beside the dry lake bed at Muroc Army Air Field in California, today’s Edwards Air Force Base. They had come to watch a small, dark green fighter with no...
Share this story It was a Halloween evening, and the temperature outside was nearly 60 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. At 8:34 p.m. local time on 31 October 1956, a twin-engined Navy transport with skis bolted to its wheels bounced across the hard snow of the polar...
Share this story The morning of 1 November 1911 is quiet over the oases outside Tripoli. A small monoplane drones above the palms at roughly 600 feet. In the cockpit, a young Italian second lieutenant reaches into a leather pouch, takes out something the size of a...
Share this story On 5 September 1983, a group of US Air Force F-4E Phantoms was crossing the Atlantic to Germany, refuelling from KC-135 tankers along the way. Halfway over, Major Jon “Ghost” Alexander’s Phantom began losing oil. What followed was...
Share this story On 2 July 1982, Larry Walters, a 33-year-old truck driver, sat down in an aluminium lawn chair in a backyard in San Pedro, California, cut the tether, and went straight up. He had tied 42 helium-filled weather balloons to the chair. He had planned a...
Share this story At 09:30 on 15 August 1942, a tanker that had been torpedoed, bombed and hit by a crashing dive bomber crept into Grand Harbour, Valletta. She had a broken back, her decks were almost awash, and two destroyers were lashed to her sides to hold her up....
Share this story At eight o’clock on the morning of 20 May 1941, the sky over western Crete filled with Junkers Ju 52 transports flying low and slow over the olive groves. Out of their doors tumbled the Fallschirmjäger, Germany’s elite paratroopers,...
Share this story On the afternoon of 4 December 1950, a Navy fighter pilot looked down at a burning wreck on a frozen North Korean mountainside and made a decision his own training told him not to make. His wingman was alive, trapped in the cockpit, and smoke was...
Share this story At 12:32 on 7 April 1945, a lookout on the bridge of the battleship Yamato spotted the first wave of American carrier aircraft. Less than two hours later the largest battleship ever built rolled over and blew up, sending a mushroom cloud thousands of...
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