History & Legends, Military Aviation
On the afternoon of August 16, 1956, residents of the Los Angeles suburbs looked up to a strange and frankly alarming sight: two jet fighters chasing a lone, pilotless aircraft in tightening circles, hurling rockets at it — and missing, again and again, while the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
At a secret airfield in the Nevada desert in the early 1980s, a test pilot lined up one of the ugliest aircraft ever built and pushed the throttles forward. It looked less like a jet than a flying shipping container — deep-bodied, boxy, with a curved back and a...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Picture an aircraft that does not sit on a runway but stands upright on its tail, nose pointed at the sky like a rocket. Around its waist spins a three-bladed wing, driven not by an engine in the fuselage but by ramjets screaming at the very tips of the blades. To...
Aviation World, History & Legends
From the moment humans first left the ground, a certain kind of pilot has asked a dangerous question: what happens if I try this? The answers fill the wildest chapter of aviation history — a century of loops, rolls, dives and impossible threading of gaps, flown by men...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Somewhere over central France in the late 1950s, test pilot André Turcat pushes a strange delta-winged aircraft past the speed where a normal jet engine begins to gasp for air. And that is when the Nord Griffon comes alive. Behind him, a ramjet the size of a small...
Aviation World, History & Legends
There is a sound a Lockheed P-38 Lightning makes that no other warbird can — two Allison V-12s, turbo-supercharged, humming in eerie harmony as the twin-boom fighter slides overhead. For most enthusiasts, hearing it once in a lifetime is a gift. This July at Oshkosh,...
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