L'11 luglio 1949, un idrovolante con a bordo Jacqueline Auriol, nuora del presidente francese, precipitò sulla Senna vicino a Parigi. Fu estratta dal relitto con gravissime lesioni al volto. I chirurghi le ricostruirono il viso attraverso oltre venti operazioni...
Share this story At Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, a B-1B Lancer that had spent years in the Arizona boneyard rolled back onto the flight line in May 2026, freshly repainted and bearing a name that reads like a sequel nobody expected: “Apocalypse...
Share this story On a grey Welsh morning in early May, hikers lining the ridges above Cadair Idris heard the unmistakable rumble of twin Pratt & Whitney F100 engines reverberating off granite walls. Then it appeared: an F-15E Strike Eagle wearing a paint scheme...
Share this story In early May 2026, a deplaning incident at Newark Liberty International Airport became the latest flashpoint in America’s turbulent relationship with air travel etiquette — but with a twist no one expected. The woman at the center of the...
Share this story On paper, the C-5 Galaxy is the most capable military transport aircraft ever built by the Western world. In practice, on any given day in 2025, 63 percent of the fleet is broken. That number — 37 percent mission capable — is not a rounding error or a...
Jacqueline Cochran è cresciuta orfana nella Florida rurale, raccogliendo cotone e dormendo sul pavimento di una baracca. A 40 anni, deteneva più record di velocità, distanza e altitudine di qualsiasi altro pilota vivente, uomo o donna che fosse. La distanza tra questi due fatti è stata coperta...
Share this story By 1939 the biplane was supposed to be finished. Monoplane fighters — the Bf 109, the Spitfire, the Hurricane — were establishing what air combat in World War II would look like. And yet the Soviet Union was, that same year, accepting deliveries of a...
Share this story In 1960 the Convair B-58 Hustler was, by every measurable standard, the most advanced combat aircraft on Earth. It could sustain Mach 2 — a speed contemporary fighters could reach only in short dashes. It carried a thermonuclear weapon in a detachable...
Share this story It is the kind of idea that should never have left the napkin. Take a small tank, weighing roughly 5.5 tonnes. Bolt on a biplane-style wing and a twin-boom tail. Tow the assembly into the air behind a heavy bomber. Cast it off over enemy lines. Let...
Share this story Bill Allen, the buttoned-down chief executive of Boeing in 1955, was on a boat. So were the executives of every major airline in the United States — gathered on Lake Washington outside Seattle for the annual Gold Cup hydroplane race. Bill Allen had...
Florence Leontine Lowe crebbe in una tenuta di Pasadena così sfarzosa da impiegare 26 domestici. Sposò un pastore a 18 anni, ebbe un figlio e poi, nel 1928, si travestì da uomo e fuggì in Messico su una nave carica di banane con il nome di "Pancho". Aveva 26 anni e...
Share this story Before the rockets. Before the electric cars became mainstream. Before Mars, before the tunnels, before the social media platform — there was a young South African entrepreneur in the Nevada desert, strapped into the cockpit of a Cold War-era jet,...
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