History & Legends, Military Aviation
In the summer of 1941, roughly 300 American men — mostly military pilots and ground crew — quietly resigned their commissions, signed contracts with a fictional Chinese company, and boarded ships bound for Burma. They weren’t soldiers. Not officially. They were...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On January 25, 1966, test pilot Bill Weaver was flying an SR-71 Blackbird at 78,000 feet over New Mexico at Mach 3.18. Behind him sat reconnaissance systems officer Jim Zwayer. They were testing a new navigation system when the aircraft’s right engine suffered a...
Aviation World, History & Legends
One hundred years ago today — 9 May 1926 — a Fokker F.VII trimotor named Josephine Ford took off from a snow strip on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, climbed to 1,500 feet, and disappeared north into the Arctic dawn. Fifteen and a half hours later it landed back...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On 13 May 1940, a Russian-born immigrant in his early fifties stood in a field in Stratford, Connecticut, climbed into a flimsy contraption made of welded steel tubing, and lifted himself one and a half metres into the air. He hovered for fifteen seconds, set the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
There is a photograph from the Second World War that stops you in your tracks. A young man sits in what looks like an oversized tin can, mounted on a swivelling platform, aiming a machine gun at a target while the entire contraption bucks and wobbles beneath him. He...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On 18 November 1952, Lieutenant E. Royce Williams climbed into the cockpit of a Grumman F9F-5 Panther on the deck of USS Oriskany, off the coast of North Korea, and went looking for trouble. Forty-five minutes later he came back with his only engine on fire, no...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On the morning of 6 January 1940, the temperature over southeastern Finland sat at minus thirty-two degrees Celsius. A flight of seven Soviet Ilyushin DB-3 bombers crossed the frontier on a routine raid against Finnish railway lines. They flew without fighter escort....
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On the morning of 1 May 1960, two young Soviet fighter pilots got an order so improbable they made the duty officer repeat it. They were to take off from a training airfield in Russia. They were to climb as fast as they possibly could. They were not to wait for a...
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