Share this story The Blackburn Skua was slow, awkward and asked to do two jobs it could not both do well. It has been mocked ever since as one of the Fleet Air Arm’s worst fighters. And yet in the first months of the Second World War this unloved machine scored...
Share this story Nobody ever called the Fairey Barracuda beautiful. With its high shoulder-mounted wing, spindly legs and a clutter of struts and flaps hanging beneath it, the Fleet Air Arm’s torpedo and dive bomber looked like it had been assembled from spare...
Share this story On the night of 30 March 1944, RAF Bomber Command sent 795 heavy bombers to Nuremberg. Ninety-six of them never came home. In a single night, in a few hours over Germany, more than 500 young airmen were killed — the worst night the Command...
Share this story In the spring of 1942 the brand-new Avro Lancaster had barely gone to war when Bomber Command sent twelve of them on a mission that bordered on suicidal: fly in broad daylight, at treetop height, a thousand miles across occupied Europe to bomb a...
Share this story On the morning of 21 March 1945, twenty de Havilland Mosquitos came in over Copenhagen at rooftop height, so low that Danes on the streets could see the crews’ faces. Their target was the Shellhus — the Gestapo’s headquarters in the...
Condividi questa storia Alcuni aerei vengono cancellati perché falliscono. Il Douglas F5D Skylancer è stato cancellato perché era troppo buono, troppo tardi e costruito dalla compagnia sbagliata. Ha superato la velocità del suono già al suo primo volo, aveva una manovrabilità eccezionale e ha impressionato ogni pilota che...
Share this story On November 6, 1945, an American fighter turned onto final approach to a small escort carrier off California when its engine quit. The pilot did not bail out. He kept coming, touched down, and caught a wire — and in doing so made the first...
Condividi questa storia Prendi un F-16 Fighting Falcon, elimina le sue ali e montaci sopra un'enorme ala a delta a forma di freccia che ne raddoppia quasi la superficie. Allunga la fusoliera, stipa il 65% di carburante in più e appendi bombe a ventisette punti di aggancio. Il risultato vola più lontano, trasporta...
Condividi questa storia Quando il Grumman X-29 stupì il pubblico delle manifestazioni aeree negli anni '80 con le sue ali che puntavano nella direzione sbagliata, e di nuovo quando la Russia presentò il Su-47 Berkut, entrambi furono salutati come passi avanti radicali. Nessuno dei due fu il primo. Un bombardiere tedesco aveva già volato con ali a freccia inversa...
Share this story The most famous British bomber of the Second World War began life as one of its worst. Before the Avro Lancaster hauled bouncing bombs to the Ruhr dams and Tallboys onto the Tirpitz, there was the Avro Manchester — a twin-engine heavy so plagued...
Share this story Three months after Pearl Harbor, two enormous Japanese flying boats lifted off from a lagoon in the Marshall Islands and set course for Hawaii. Their plan was almost absurd: fly nearly 2,000 miles across empty ocean, meet a submarine at a deserted...
Share this story Late in the afternoon of April 18, 1943 — Palm Sunday — a wall of German transport planes crawled north-east across the Mediterranean at wavetop height, so low their propellers kicked spray off the swells. There were about ninety of them,...
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