History & Legends, Military Aviation
It was fat, slow, and so unlovely that the men who flew it simply called it “the Whale.” It set no speed records and never graced a recruiting poster. And yet the Douglas F3D Skyknight did something no glamorous day-fighter could claim: on a dark night...
Aviation World, History & Legends
You have almost certainly seen this crash, even if you have never heard of the aircraft. A stubby, wingless machine tumbles end over end across a desert lakebed, throwing up a cloud of dust, and comes to rest upside down. For millions of people, that few seconds of...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
In 1960, a young civilian test pilot named Neil Armstrong was quietly picked to fly into space — not in a capsule on top of a rocket, but in a winged glider that would ride a booster to orbit and then fly home to a runway like an aeroplane. The machine was...
Aviation World, History & Legends, Military Aviation
It looked like something bolted together in a shed: an open cockpit, fixed landing gear, a wing borrowed from a light aircraft. But the ungainly little Bell X-14 could do something almost nothing else in 1957 could — rise straight up off the ground, hover, tip...
Aviation World, History & Legends
On a clear summer morning in 1956, two airliners climbed out of Los Angeles minutes apart, each carrying dozens of people east across the desert. Somewhere over the Grand Canyon, in a sky so vast it should have held them both a thousand times over, they flew into each...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Almost everyone can tell you that Chuck Yeager was first to break the sound barrier. Far fewer can name the man who first flew at twice the speed of sound. He was Scott Crossfield, and he did it on November 20, 1953, in a sleek, snow-white rocket plane called the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On September 27, 1956, Captain Milburn “Mel” Apt became the first human being to fly at three times the speed of sound. Minutes later he was dead. The Bell X-2 gave the world its first taste of Mach 3 and, on the very same flight, its first Mach 3 fatality...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
For thirty-five summers, one of the most beloved sounds over the Swiss Alps was the deep, uneven drone of three radial engines and the sight of a corrugated metal skin catching the light. It was the Junkers Ju 52 — “Tante Ju,” Auntie Ju —...
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