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...
Share this story When Bud Anderson died in May 2024 at the age of 102, America lost the last of a vanishing breed: a World War II triple ace, a man who shot down enemy aircraft in the skies over Europe and lived to tell the story for eighty years. He flew a P-51...
Share this story Some aircraft are remembered for what they did. The McDonnell F3H Demon is remembered for what it led to. Underpowered, dangerous in its early years, and saddled with one of the worst engines in naval-aviation history, the Demon nonetheless taught its...
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...
Condividi questa storia All'inizio degli anni '50 gli Stati Uniti, patria di Boeing e Douglas e della più potente industria aeronautica del mondo, si misero alla ricerca di un bombardiere all'estero. Acquistarono un modello britannico. Il Martin B-57 Canberra, una versione di costruzione americana del modello inglese...
Share this story On 7 April 2003, Captain Kim Campbell rolled in over Baghdad to help American soldiers pinned down near the Tigris. She put her A-10 Thunderbolt where it was needed, took the shot, and started to pull off target. Then a surface-to-air missile found...
Share this story Most warplanes of the 1950s are museum pieces or scrap. The Xian H-6 is neither. Nearly seventy years after its Soviet ancestor first flew, China is still building, flying, and continually re-arming this jet — and the latest versions are among...
Share this story She was the best-known aviator in Nazi Germany, and one of the most gifted test pilots of her era — a small, intense woman who flew rocket planes, the first practical helicopter, and a piloted version of the V-1 flying bomb. She was also a...
Condividi questa storia All'inizio degli anni '50, l'aeronautica militare statunitense desiderava un unico velivolo in grado di salire rapidamente, individuare un bombardiere sovietico sul proprio radar e abbatterlo con una stiva piena di missili prima che raggiungesse una città americana. La risposta fu l'F-102 Delta Dagger...
Share this story In 1949 the Swedish Air Force asked for something that did not exist anywhere in the world: an interceptor capable of Mach 1.4 to 1.5, able to operate from dispersed road bases, to meet a Soviet bomber threat crossing the Baltic.Saab’s answer...
Share this story There is an aeroplane in the Cold War Gallery at Dayton that the museum has deliberately not restored. Its wings are off. Its nose is crushed. The paint is scorched.The Lockheed XF-90 lost its competition, never entered production, and was officially...
Share this story In February 1938, inside a Berlin exhibition hall, a 25-year-old woman hovered a helicopter between the walls.Nobody had flown a helicopter indoors before. The Focke-Achgelis Fa 61 was the first genuinely controllable helicopter in the world, and...
Recent Comments