History & Legends, Military Aviation
On October 3, 1967, test pilot William J. “Pete” Knight climbed into a black, dart-shaped aircraft bolted to the wing of a B-52 bomber. At 45,000 feet over the Mojave Desert, the B-52 released him. Knight lit the rocket engine. In the next 84 seconds, he accelerated...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On September 6, 1976, a Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat interceptor appeared on Japanese radar screens without warning. It was flying fast, low, and heading straight for Hakodate Airport on the northern island of Hokkaido. The pilot had not filed a flight plan. He had not...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
In August 1914, when the first European armies crossed their borders and the Great War began, military aircraft were used for one purpose: watching. Unarmed reconnaissance planes flew over enemy lines, their observers sketching troop positions and supply routes. The...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On the morning of April 18, 1942 — four months and eleven days after Pearl Harbor — sixteen B-25 Mitchell medium bombers launched from the pitching deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. They were headed for Tokyo. None of them had enough fuel to return. There was...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Two small, strange-looking aircraft were built in total secrecy at Lockheed’s Skunk Works facility in Burbank, California, between 1976 and 1977. They were angular, faceted, and looked like something a geometry student had folded out of sheet metal. They were...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
In 1920, Bessie Coleman walked into every flight school in the United States that she could find. Every single one turned her away. She was Black. She was a woman. In Jim Crow America, that was two disqualifications, and neither was negotiable. So she learned French....
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Eugene Jacques Bullard was born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1895 — the grandson of enslaved people, the son of a man who had barely escaped a lynch mob. By the time he was eleven years old, he had decided that his future lay anywhere but the American South. So he ran...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
It was ugly. It leaked. It trailed a filthy black smoke plume that could be spotted from thirty miles away. The cockpit was cramped, the controls were heavy, and early models did not even carry a gun — a decision that got pilots killed over Vietnam. The McDonnell...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalityGerman 🇩🇪Aerial Victories62 (2nd highest WWI German ace)Aircraft FlownFokker D.VII, Albatros D.III/D.VWarsWorld War IBorn / Died26 Apr 1896 – 17 Nov 1941 (age 45)UnitJagdstaffel 37, JG I (under Richthofen) Nachtvögel. Aufnahme von Ernst Udet c....
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On February 2, 1970, somewhere over the frozen plains of Montana, Captain Gary Foust of the 71st Fighter Interceptor Squadron had a problem that no amount of skill could solve. His F-106A Delta Dart — a supersonic interceptor designed to hunt Soviet bombers at the...
Aviation World, History & Legends
On the morning of July 25, 1909, Louis Blériot climbed into a 25-horsepower monoplane that he had built himself, pointed it north across the grey water of the English Channel, and disappeared into the fog. He had no compass. He had no landmarks. He had no way to know...
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