History & Legends, Military Aviation
On a May morning in 1957, over the Pacific near Christmas Island, a Vickers Valiant called XD818 opened its bomb bay and released a device that fell away, dropped for long seconds, and then turned the sky white. Britain had just become a thermonuclear power — and it...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Walk up to the Dornier Do 335 and something looks wrong. There is a propeller on the nose, as expected — and then a second propeller on the tail, spinning behind the fin. The Germans called it the Pfeil, the Arrow. It was the fastest piston-engined fighter the Third...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
In March 2026, a silver jet with a wickedly swept wing thundered down a runway near Houston and hauled itself into the Texas sky. It was a North American F-100 Super Sabre — one of only two left flying anywhere on earth — and its return is a good excuse to remember an...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
In the late 1930s, Bell Aircraft set out to build a fighter so ambitious that it needed gunners riding inside the engines. The result, the Bell YFM-1 Airacuda, was sleek, futuristic, bristling with cannon — and one of the most gloriously misguided warplanes the United...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
France, the late 1950s. At SNECMA, engineers were building an aircraft with no wings you would recognise — no long span, no tail as anyone knew it, just a jet engine wrapped inside a great metal ring, designed to stand on its tail and rise straight into the sky. They...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Look at almost any jet airliner and the engines are in one of two places: slung under the wings, or bolted to the tail. Now look at the VFW-614. Its two engines sit on pylons on top of the wings — a layout almost no other airliner in history has ever used. It was West...
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