Aviation World, History & Legends
Twenty years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay set foot on the summit of Mount Everest, two men in open-cockpit biplanes looked down on it from above. On April 3, 1933, a small British expedition did something that sounds impossible for the technology of its...
Aviation World, History & Legends
Twenty-one years ago today, on August 14, 2005, a Boeing 737 crossed the sky over Greece with everyone aboard already beyond saving. It flew straight and level, obedient to its autopilot, holding its assigned altitude and following its route as if nothing were wrong....
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On 3 July 1950, barely a week into the Korean War, Lieutenant JG Leonard Plog rolled his straight-winged jet onto the tail of a propeller-driven Yak-9 and squeezed the trigger. It was the first air-to-air kill ever scored by a US Navy jet, and it belonged to a stubby,...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Ask anyone who served in Vietnam what the war sounded like, and many will give you the same answer: a rhythmic, chopping whop-whop-whop rolling in over the trees. It was the sound of the Bell UH-1 — the Huey — and depending on which end of it you were on,...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Look closely at the tail of the Spitfire and something is wrong — gloriously, deliberately wrong. Beside the familiar red-white-blue fin flash of the Royal Air Force sits a five-pointed communist red star. This is a British fighter, in British service, flying...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
An extension to The Race for the Bomb, our focus series. Before the Enola Gay could take off from Tinian, the bomb had to reach Tinian — and the ship that carried it never came home. This is the story of USS Indianapolis: the secret cargo, the twelve minutes, the four...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
An extension to The Race for the Bomb, our ten-part focus series. Part 9 flew the atomic missions; this piece goes back three months earlier, into the room where a handful of men decided which cities would live and which would die — and why the city at the top of the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Imagine you are a fighter pilot who has just bailed out over a cold, heaving sea, far from land, with the enemy coast in sight. You are alone in the swell — until you hear engines, and a big, ungainly flying boat drops out of the sky, lands on the open ocean...
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