Storia e leggende, Aviazione militare
Share this story In 1935 the Soviet Union built the largest aircraft on Earth — an eight-engined giant with a wingspan to rival a modern Boeing 747, fitted out not with weapons but with a printing press, a photographic lab, a telephone exchange, a cinema, and a radio...
Storia e leggende, Aviazione militare
Share this story He was 31 years old — ancient by fighter-pilot standards — which is how a hard-drinking, twice-divorced Marine named Gregory Boyington got the nickname “Pappy.” He was also, by 1943, something close to washed up: a former Flying Tiger with...
Storia e leggende, Aviazione militare
Share this story He was born in Brazil, to a father from Alsace and a mother from Lorraine, and learned to fly at a club in Rio. He would end the war a wing commander in the Royal Air Force at the age of twenty-four, and General de Gaulle would call him...
Storia e leggende, Aviazione militare
Share this story It was a little before nine on the night of 18 April 1995, and Captain Brian Udell was flying his F-15E Strike Eagle out over the black Atlantic off North Carolina. Beside him sat his weapons systems officer, Captain Dennis White. It was routine...
Storia e leggende, Aviazione militare
Share this story At 11:20 on the morning of 25 January 1966, a Lockheed test pilot named Bill Weaver lifted an SR-71 Blackbird off the runway at Edwards Air Force Base. Beside him, in the reconnaissance systems officer’s seat, sat Jim Zwayer. A few hours later,...
Storia e leggende, Aviazione militare
Share this story Some warplanes make their name in dogfights, twisting through the sky with guns blazing. The McDonnell F-101 Voodoo made most of its name doing the opposite: flying low, flying flat out, and flying completely unarmed straight over the people trying to...
Storia e leggende, Aviazione militare
Share this story Some aircraft impress by their cleverness. The Tupolev Tu-160 impresses first by its sheer dimensions. At 54.1 metres (177 ft 6 in) it is longer than a Boeing B-52, and when its wings are spread it measures 55.7 metres (182 ft 9 in) from tip to tip....
Storia e leggende, Aviazione militare
Share this story Every so often aviation history throws up an aircraft whose greatest achievement was simply existing. The Bell P-59 Airacomet is the patron saint of that club. It was America’s first jet aircraft, a genuine milestone, and yet it was so...
Storia e leggende, Aviazione militare
Share this story Most military aircraft can be summed up in a single job. Fighters fight. Bombers bomb. Attack helicopters attack. And then there is the Mil Mi-24, a machine that looked at the neat little boxes military planners like to draw and cheerfully refused to...
Storia e leggende, Aviazione militare
Share this story Ask anyone who was there and they will tell you the same thing: you heard it before you saw it. A low, chopping pulse rolling in over the treeline, whop-whop-whop, growing until it filled the whole sky. For a generation of soldiers, that sound meant...
Storia e leggende, Aviazione militare
Share this story Few aircraft announce themselves before they are seen. The Tupolev Tu-95, known to NATO as the “Bear,” is one of them. It is a large, four-engine turboprop strategic bomber, and yet it cruises at speeds normally reserved for jets. That...
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