The Rocket Fighter That Dissolved Its Pilots
On 28 July 1944, P-51 pilots of the 359th Fighter Group were escorting B-17s away from Merseburg when someone called out contrails high at six o’clock. Two stubby, tailless shapes came slicing down through the formation faster than anything the Americans had...
One Switch From Armageddon
A few minutes past midnight on 24 January 1961, a Mark 39 hydrogen bomb drifted down through the winter darkness over Wayne County, North Carolina, swinging beneath a 30-metre (100-foot) parachute. It settled nose-first into a field near the hamlet of Faro and came to...
Air New Zealand’s Engine Nightmare Is Over
In the red dirt of Alice Springs, in the middle of the Australian outback, a Boeing 787-9 sat parked for the better part of a year — not broken, not retired, just waiting for engines. On June 28 it finally flew home to Auckland, and with it, Air New Zealand quietly...
GOL Goes Long-Haul: Rio to New York
For a quarter of a century, GOL has been Brazil’s definitive short-haul airline: a vast orange-tailed fleet of Boeing 737s hopping between São Paulo, Rio and every corner of South America. On July 8, that identity changes. A GOL flight number will push back from Rio...
A Kamikaze Drone Launches From a Warship
Off the south coast of England, a small black flying wing shot off a catapult rail bolted to the deck of a moving Royal Navy ship, climbed away on a whining turbojet, and flew itself to a target. No pilot, no recovery, no second chances — the Nyan is designed to fly...
The Navy Is Sinking Its Own Cruiser
Somewhere in the Pacific in the coming weeks, a US Navy cruiser that fired Tomahawks in two wars will be hit by torpedoes, missiles and bombs until she slips under — and the people shooting will be her friends. The decommissioned USS Mobile Bay is about to become the...
The Army Wants to Drown Its Enemies in Drones
The US Army has looked hard at Ukraine and drawn a precise, uncomfortable conclusion: there is no longer any such thing as a safe place on a battlefield. Its answer, formalised in a redesignation ceremony at Joint Base Lewis-McChord on June 18, is a new kind of...
A Robot Tanker Sails Into New York
Among the tall ships and grey hulls that filled New York Harbor for America’s 250th birthday, the strangest silhouette wasn’t a ship at all. Lashed to the flight deck of USS Nimitz, between rows of Super Hornets, sat a windowless grey machine with folded wings and no...
The Stealth Bomber That Stayed Home
On July 4, virtually everything in the US military that flies made an appearance over Washington. Three bombers in one formation. Eight Thunderbirds. A brand-new Air Force One with a Raptor escort. The one aircraft everybody on the internet was actually waiting for...
Nine Hours of Thunder Over Washington
The thermometer read over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the crowd on the National Mall had been baking since morning, and somewhere above the haze four F-5 Tigers were pulling into formation. One of them was flown by the administrator of NASA himself. It was 1:14 p.m. on...
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