Aviation World, History & Legends
At 7:25 on the evening of 6 May 1937, the largest flying machine ever built nosed toward its mooring mast at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey. The LZ 129 Hindenburg had crossed the Atlantic from Frankfurt in just over sixty hours, carrying 36 passengers who had...
Aviation World, History & Legends
On the morning of 4 May 1942, two fleets stumbled toward each other across a thousand miles of warm Pacific water. Neither would ever see the other. For the first time in the history of naval warfare, a major battle would be fought entirely by aircraft launched from...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On 18 April 1942, four months after Pearl Harbor, sixteen B-25 Mitchell medium bombers launched from the deck of USS Hornet — something that had never been done before and would never be attempted again — and flew 1,000 miles to bomb Tokyo. The military damage they...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalityPakistani 🇵🇰Aerial Victories9 (5 in under 60 seconds — world record sortie)Aircraft FlownF-86 SabreWars1965 Indo-Pakistani WarBorn / Died6 Jul 1935 – 18 Mar 2013 (age 77)UnitNo. 11 Squadron PAF “Arrows” Mohammad Mahmood Alam 1965 —...
Aviation World, History & Legends
In 1936, American Airlines president C.R. Smith made an audacious request to Donald Douglas: build an airliner that could carry passengers across America in 16 hours and make money doing it. The result was the Douglas DC-3 — an aircraft so well-designed that it...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalityIsraeli 🇮🇱Aerial Victories17 (highest Western jet ace)Aircraft FlownF-4 Phantom II, Mirage IIIWarsSix-Day War, War of Attrition, Yom Kippur WarBorn29 Oct 1938Unit101 Squadron “First Fighter Squadron” Giora Epstein — via Wikimedia...
Aviation World, History & Legends
He failed five times. Each time, he climbed into a capsule smaller than a garden shed, was lifted to 35,000 feet by a balloon the size of a 14-storey building, and tried to navigate the unpredictable jet streams around the entire planet. Each time, weather, equipment...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalityAmerican 🇺🇸Aerial Victories11.5 (WWII ace); also 1st pilot to break sound barrierAircraft FlownP-51 Mustang, Bell X-1, F-86 SabreWarsWorld War II, Korean War (advisor)Born / Died13 Feb 1923 – 7 Dec 2020 (age 97)Unit357th Fighter Group (WWII)...
Aviation World, History & Legends
On New Year’s Day 1914, a crowd gathered on the waterfront in St. Petersburg, Florida, to watch history. A Benoist XIV flying boat — a wood-and-canvas biplane with a pusher propeller and a hull designed to land on water — taxied out across Tampa Bay. In the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalitySoviet 🇷🇺Aerial Victories22 (highest jet ace in history, Korean War)Aircraft FlownMiG-15bisWarsKorean WarBorn / Died5 May 1923 – 9 Nov 1986 (age 63)Unit17th IAP (Fighter Aviation Regiment) MiG-15 is shot down by US Navy planes over Korea c1952 —...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On 1 May 1960, the Eisenhower administration told the world that a NASA weather research aircraft had gone missing over Turkey. It was a carefully constructed lie — and it lasted exactly four days. On 5 May, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev revealed that they had shot...
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