History & Legends, Military Aviation
On October 1, 1949, just past three in the afternoon, the new People’s Republic of China formally announced itself to the world. Mao Zedong stood on the rostrum at Tiananmen Gate, read the proclamation, and watched the first National Day parade march past. Then...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
It happened in the dark, somewhere over Tehran’s northern suburbs, on the night of March 4, 2026. An Iranian Yakovlev Yak-130 — a Russian-built trainer-light-attack jet, painted in IRIAF camouflage — climbed out of Mehrabad as Israeli fighters worked the western...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
The Korean morning was cold enough on 20 May 1951 that the ramp crews at Kimpo Air Base could see their breath inside the open cockpits as they buttoned up the F-86 Sabres of the 334th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron. The pilots, climbing into the jets, smelled the same...
Aviation World, History & Legends
On the morning of 10 June 1990, British Airways Flight 5390 was climbing through 17,300 feet over the Cotswolds, on its way from Birmingham to Málaga. The aircraft was a BAC One-Eleven 528FL, the cabin crew were serving breakfast, and in the cockpit Captain Tim...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On the morning of 21 September 1953, a 21-year-old Senior Lieutenant of the Korean People’s Army Air Force named No Kum-Sok climbed into his MiG-15bis at Sunan air base outside Pyongyang. Sunan was a thirty-minute drive from his home in North Korean territory;...
Aviation World, History & Legends
No pilot in aviation history provokes quite the same mixture of awe and unease as Hanna Reitsch. She was the first woman to fly a helicopter. The first woman to fly a rocket-powered aircraft. The first — and only — woman to receive both the Iron Cross Second Class and...
English
Recent Comments