History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalityAmerican 🇺🇸Aerial Victories34.5 (WWII) + 6.5 (Korea) = 41 totalAircraft FlownP-47 Thunderbolt, F-86 SabreWarsWorld War II (Europe), Korean WarBorn / Died28 Jan 1919 – 31 Jan 2002 (age 83)Unit56th Fighter Group (WWII), 51st Fighter Interceptor...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
The crews called them “the eleven days.” From December 18 to 29, 1972 — with a pause on Christmas Day — more than 200 B-52 Stratofortresses flew 729 sorties over Hanoi and Haiphong, dropping over 20,000 tons of ordnance on the most heavily defended...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
At 70,000 feet, the North American XB-70 Valkyrie was the fastest, highest-flying bomber ever built. Two hundred and seventy feet of white-painted delta wing, six General Electric YJ93 engines producing 186,000 pounds of combined thrust, and a design speed of Mach...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Twenty kills. Zero losses. In the spring of 1982, a handful of British Sea Harriers — subsonic, short-ranged, outnumbered — went to war over the South Atlantic against the Argentine Air Force. They were not supposed to win. They won anyway. The Falklands War air...
Aviation World, History & Legends
On July 26, 2016, a strange, slow, silent aircraft landed at Abu Dhabi International Airport, completing a journey that had begun 16 months earlier at the same airfield. Solar Impulse 2 had just circumnavigated the Earth — crossing Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalityAmerican 🇺🇸Aerial Victories40 (US all-time record)Aircraft FlownP-38 LightningWarsWorld War II (Pacific)Born / Died24 Sep 1920 – 6 Aug 1945 (age 24)Unit9th Fighter Squadron, 49th Fighter Group, 5th Air Force Lockheed P-38 Lightning –...
Aviation World, History & Legends
On October 4, 2004 — the 47th anniversary of Sputnik — a small, white aircraft climbed to 112 kilometres above the Mojave Desert, briefly reached space, and returned safely to Earth. It was the third such flight in five days. The pilot was different each time but the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalitySoviet 🇷🇺Aerial Victories11 (aerial victories + ground)Aircraft FlownYak-1, LaGG-3WarsWorld War IIBorn / Died7 Jul 1916 – 19 Jul 1943 (age 27)Unit586th Fighter Aviation Regiment, 73rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment...
Aviation World, History & Legends
On December 14, 1986, a strange-looking aircraft — long, thin, with two fuselages, a pusher engine, a puller engine, and wings so flexible they bent visibly under their own weight — rolled down a runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California and lifted off. It was...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalitySoviet 🇷🇺Aerial Victories12 (highest female ace of all time)Aircraft FlownYak-1, Yak-1BWarsWorld War IIBorn / Died18 Aug 1921 – 1 Aug 1943 (age 21)Unit586th Fighter Aviation Regiment, 73rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment Order of the Red Banner...
Aviation World, History & Legends
At 10:56 PM Eastern time on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong placed his left boot on the surface of the Moon and said words that 600 million people — one in five people alive on Earth — were listening to live. The signal took 1.26 seconds to travel from the lunar surface...
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