History & Legends, Military Aviation
In June 1941 the United States rolled out a bomber so large that a B-17 could have parked under one of its wings. The Douglas XB-19 spanned 212 feet, carried sleeping bunks and a kitchen for its relief crew, and was, for a time, the largest aircraft ever to fly in...
Aviation World, History & Legends, Military Aviation
On a freezing April night in 1978, a South Korean airliner full of sleeping passengers wandered a thousand miles off course, over one of the most secret corners of the Soviet Union, and was hit by an air-to-air missile. What happened next is one of the most...
Aviation World, History & Legends
On the afternoon of 1 November 2011, a Boeing 767 slid down a runway at Warsaw’s Chopin Airport on its belly, spraying sparks and foam, with 231 people aboard and not a single wheel beneath it. When it stopped, everyone walked away. Some passengers did not even...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
The story is irresistible: in the depths of the Second World War, a colossal six-engine German bomber slips across the Atlantic, flies to within sight of the Manhattan skyline, photographs Long Island, and turns for home before America ever knows it was there. The...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
It was, by common consent, one of the most beautiful fighters ever built, and one of the most complete. Bigger, faster and longer-legged than the Mirage 2000 it grew from, the Dassault Mirage 4000 was France’s bid to build a true heavyweight, a twin-engine...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Long before the Tomahawk, and years before Polaris let a submarine fire a nuclear missile from beneath the waves, America’s first seagoing deterrent worked in the most nerve-wracking way imaginable. To shoot, the submarine had to surface in enemy waters, roll a...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Just after dawn on October 25, 1944, lookouts on a cluster of small American ships off the island of Samar saw something that should not have been there: pagoda masts on the horizon. The most powerful surface fleet Japan could still put to sea — battleships led...
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