Share this story On 3 July 1936, Short Brothers’ chief test pilot John Lankester Parker took a brand-new flying boat out onto the River Medway at Rochester for what was meant to be nothing more than taxi trials. The big silver hull handled so well that Parker...
Share this story On the morning of 26 October 1940, a bare-metal fighter with no paint and not even a name sat waiting at Mines Field, the small Los Angeles airfield that would one day become LAX. Freelance test pilot Vance Breese climbed in, started the Allison V-12...
Share this story At 06:45 on the morning of 26 October 1942, an American scout pilot north of the Santa Cruz Islands found what every carrier admiral in the Pacific was looking for: the flight decks of Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo’s main body. Thirteen minutes...
Share this story On 26 October 1958, with military bands playing on the ramp at New York’s Idlewild Airport, 111 passengers climbed the airstairs of a gleaming Pan American Boeing 707-121. On her nose, in neat script, was her name: Clipper America. Her...
Share this story Electrician’s Mate Orville Bethard thought the worst of 25 October 1944 was behind him. His escort carrier, USS St. Lo, had just survived more than two hours under fire from Japanese battleships off Samar. The enemy fleet had turned away....
Share this story At 05:30 on 25 October 1983, the first Army Rangers stepped out of a Hercules over the south-western tip of Grenada. They jumped from about 500 feet, low enough to stay under the anti-aircraft fire. Below them lay a half-finished runway, blocked with...
Share this story Shortly before midnight on 14 May 1982, Royal Navy Sea Kings clattered in low over the dark, wind-scoured grass of a small island north of West Falkland. Out of them climbed about 45 men of D Squadron, 22 Special Air Service, each loaded with mortar...
Share this story In the last week of January 1991, American AWACS crews over the Gulf watched something nobody had predicted. Iraqi jets were taking off, staying low and running hard, not towards the coalition and not towards friendly Jordan, but east, towards Iran....
Share this story On 10 January 1956, ground crews in Turkey and West Germany let go of the first nine of hundreds of giant plastic balloons. Each one carried a camera gondola about the size of a refrigerator. The cover story said they were studying the weather. In...
Share this story On 14 April 1956, three silver jets climbed out of Thule, Greenland, and turned towards the top of the world. Their pilots were heading for Noril’sk, a closed Soviet nickel-mining city 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Two air refuellings...
Share this story Four hundred feet above a moonlit field in occupied France, a bomber painted glossy black slows to just above stalling speed. Below, three flashlights in a row and a fourth at a right angle mark the spot. In the belly, a man in a padded jump suit sits...
Share this story On the evening of 9 July 1918, a small yellow biplane appeared out of the south over Edmonton, Alberta, following the railway line up from Calgary. In the cockpit sat a 27-year-old American woman. In a mailbag beside her were 259 letters, the first...
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