Burnelli spent fifty years arguing the fuselage should be a wing. His aircraft worked. He never sold one in quantity, and exactly one survives.
Bell XP-77: America’s Wooden Lightweight Fighter
A fighter the size of an air racer, built of wood so it would not use strategic metal. Two flew. One spun in over Florida. The other was left to rot and burned.
US Air Force at 79: The Day It Became Its Own Service
On 18 September 1947 the National Security Act made American air power a service in its own right. Seventy-nine years on, the argument it was founded on is still live.
Lockheed L-133: America’s First Jet Fighter, Never Built
In 1942 Lockheed offered the USAAF a canard, blended-body twin jet predicted at 612 mph. The Army called it too advanced and built the P-80 instead.
ConvAirCar: The Flying Car Killed by the Wrong Fuel Gauge
Convair planned 160,000 flying cars. It built two. The first came down three days after its maiden flight because the pilot read the car’s fuel gauge.
Flygvapnet at 100: How Sweden Built Its Own Air Force
Fifty-four aircraft over Stockholm and 230,000 people at Malmen. A hundred years of a small neutral country insisting on building its own fighters.
Constance Babington Smith: The Woman Who Found the V-1
She spotted an object less than a millimetre long on a reconnaissance print and calculated a twenty-foot wingspan. It was the V-1, and nobody had seen one before.
T-7A Red Hawk Gets an IOC Date: August 2027
AETC has named August 2027 and 14 aircraft for T-7A Red Hawk initial operational capability at JBSA-Randolph. The delivery maths leaves almost no slack.
A Welded Fuselage Would Be Stronger. That Is Why Nobody Builds One
An airliner fuselage contains something in the order of a million rivets. Each one is a hole drilled through the skin, which is to say a stress concentration deliberately introduced into a pressure vessel, repeated a million times. A welded fuselage would have none of...
American Warns Fuel Costs Will Force Flight Cuts
American, United and Southwest all told investors on 16 September that surging jet fuel is forcing capacity cuts. Demand is fine. The arithmetic is not.
Space Force Plans to More Than Double Its Guardians by 2031
The US Space Force is targeting 25,000 uniformed Guardians and 12,500 civilians by fiscal 2031 — a 134 percent increase. Recruiting is not the hard part.
Mojave STOL Lands on a Korean Tank Trail Mid-Mission
GA-ASI and Hanwha landed a Mojave STOL on a tank manoeuvre trail inside a live-fire range, then flew it out again — a first for a MALE-class drone.
Rostov Airfield Strike: Ukraine Claims Six Russian Aircraft
Ukraine says SBU drones destroyed an An-12, two An-26s and three helicopters at Rostov-on-Don Tsentralny overnight into 17 September 2026.
Lufthansa Orders 20 Boeing 737 MAX 10 to Replace Airbus Jets
Lufthansa Group has exercised options for 20 Boeing 737 MAX 10s worth about $3.4 billion at list, earmarked to replace older Airbus A320-family jets.
F-16 Crash in Michigan: Texas Guard Pilot Ejects Safely
An F-16 of the Texas Air National Guard’s 149th Fighter Wing came down in Grand Traverse County on 17 September. The pilot ejected and survived.
F-16 Crash in Michigan: Texas Guard Pilot Ejects on Training Sortie
A 149th Fighter Wing F-16 came down in Grand Traverse County on 17 September during Operation Northern Cactus. The pilot ejected and is in stable condition.
Bréguet Br.960 Vultur: The French Jet That Also Carried a Propeller
The French Navy asked for four hours of loiter and 700 km/h in one carrier aircraft. Bréguet’s answer had a turboprop in the nose and a turbojet in the tail.