History & Legends, Military Aviation
On the evening of October 12, 1947, test pilot Chuck Yeager went horse riding in the Mojave Desert and fell off, breaking two ribs. Two days later, in severe pain and with his ribs tightly taped, he crawled into the cockpit of a Bell X-1 rocket plane, used a sawed-off...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalityGerman 🇩🇪Aerial Victories267 (4th all-time)Aircraft FlownFw 190A, Bf 109GWarsWorld War II (Eastern Front)Born / Died21 Feb 1917 – 14 Feb 1945 (age 27)UnitJG 54 “Grünherz” WW2 Norway. German uniforms Luftwaffe Polarflieger pilot Fire...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
At dawn on August 27, 1939 — four days before Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began — test pilot Erich Warsitz climbed into a small, unremarkable-looking aircraft at the Heinkel airfield in Rostock-Marienehe and opened a throttle connected to an engine...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalityGerman 🇩🇪Aerial Victories275 (3rd all-time)Aircraft FlownBf 109GWarsWorld War II (Eastern Front)Born / Died10 Mar 1918 – 4 Oct 2009 (age 91)UnitJG 52 Bundesarchiv Bild 183-J16509, Günther Rall — via Wikimedia Commons There’s a detail in...
Aviation World, History & Legends
At 7:25 PM on May 6, 1937, the German airship LZ 129 Hindenburg — 804 feet long, the largest aircraft ever built — caught fire while attempting to dock at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. In 34 seconds, the largest flying object in history was a wreck on the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalityGerman 🇩🇪Aerial Victories301 (2nd all-time)Aircraft FlownBf 109G, Fw 190WarsWorld War II (Eastern Front)Born / Died20 Mar 1919 – 8 Jan 1983 (age 63)UnitJG 52 5-Luftwaffe-pilot-Major-Gerhard-Barkhorn-01 — via Wikimedia Commons He is the...
Aviation World, History & Legends
On July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan took off from Lae, New Guinea, bound for Howland Island — a two-mile-long coral strip in the central Pacific, 2,556 miles away. They were on the longest and most dangerous leg of an around-the-world flight....
Aviation World, History & Legends
On the evening of May 21, 1927, a single-engine monoplane appeared out of the darkness over Le Bourget airfield near Paris. The crowd waiting on the ground numbered 150,000 people — the largest gathering in French history to that point. When Charles Lindbergh stepped...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On October 6, 1971, an aircraft appeared over the Sinai Peninsula that no Israeli fighter could catch. It flew at Mach 3.2 — faster than a rifle bullet — at an altitude above 24,000 metres. Israeli Air Force F-4 Phantoms scrambled to intercept. They fired missiles....
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Quick FactsNationalitySpanish 🇪🇸Aerial Victories40 (highest ace, Spanish Civil War)Aircraft FlownFiat CR.32, Bf 109B/CWarsSpanish Civil War (Nationalist)Born / Died25 Apr 1904 – 4 Apr 1939 (age 34)UnitGrupo 2-G-3 Chirri (2675595340) — via Wikimedia Commons Most of the...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Two days before the most important flight in the history of aviation, Captain Chuck Yeager went horseback riding with his wife, Glennis, near their home at Muroc Army Air Field in the California desert. The horse threw him. He hit the ground hard and cracked two ribs...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
No supersonic fighter in history has been built in greater numbers. No jet has served in more air forces, fought in more wars, or lasted longer in frontline service. The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 — NATO codename Fishbed — first flew in 1955, entered production in 1959,...
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