China’s ‘Bohai Sea Monster’ Just Got Its Clearest Photos Yet
In the 1960s, American spy satellites scanning the Caspian Sea brought back pictures of something that should not have existed: a 92-metre, jet-powered hybrid of ship and aircraft, skimming the water at 500 km/h. The CIA called it the Caspian Sea Monster. The Soviets...
The Football War 1969: Aviation’s Last Piston-Engine Dogfight
The afternoon of 17 July 1969 was warm and clear above Honduras. Captain Fernando Soto’s Vought F4U-5NL Corsair, FAH-609, climbed out of the haze and into the kind of light that fighter pilots talk about for the rest of their lives. He was about to fight the...
Bryan Allen: He Pedalled a Human-Powered Aircraft Across the English Channel
The Gossamer Albatross was made of carbon-fibre tubes, Mylar film, and piano wire. It weighed 31 kg. Its wingspan was 29 metres. It was powered by a single human being pedalling a bicycle mechanism connected to a pusher propeller at the rear. On 12 June 1979, Bryan...
The 10 Most Beautiful Wings in the World
A wing is the most consequential geometry in nature. Whether it is the rachis-and-vane of a feather, the chitin-and-membrane of an insect, or the aluminium-and-composite of an aircraft, the same equation has to balance the same forces: lift against weight, thrust...
How Fast Will I Fly? Speed, Altitude, and What You Actually Feel in a Fighter Jet
“How fast will I actually go?” It’s the question we hear most — from first-time L-39 passengers who’ve never been in a military aircraft, from aviation enthusiasts booking a MiG-29 Edge of Space flight, and from everyone in between. The short...
A 68-Year-Old KC-135 Just Came Back From the Dead
The Davis-Monthan boneyard at Tucson, Arizona is the largest aircraft graveyard in the world. Four thousand-plus airframes from every era of postwar American military aviation sit baking in the desert sun under thick layers of preservative spraylat, waiting for the...
RAF Wedgetail Finally Arrives at Lossiemouth After Five Years Without AEW
On 22 May 2026, the first Boeing E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft landed at RAF Lossiemouth in northern Scotland. It is the first time the type has touched down at its operational home base. The RAF, after five years without a credible AEW...
The Warthog Just Got a New Probe and the “Angry Kitten” — Six Weeks Old, Now in Combat
The A-10 Thunderbolt II — the Warthog, the Hog, the GAU-8 with wings — has been on death row at the Pentagon for a decade. The official retirement plan has called for the type to be fully phased out by 2028. The Air Force has gone on record dozens of times saying the...
The World’s First Unmanned AWACS Just Took Off
An airborne early warning aircraft is not, technically, a stealth platform. It is the opposite of stealth. The whole point of an AEW airframe is that it is up there, loud in the radio spectrum, broadcasting a powerful surveillance radar so it can see incoming threats...
Birth of the Snake: How Bell Built the AH-1 Cobra in Eight Months
The Bell AH-1 Cobra is the most consequential helicopter design in American military history. Before the Cobra, every armed helicopter in the world was a transport airframe with weapons bolted onto it — a Huey with door guns, a Mi-4 with rocket pods, a Wessex with...
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