History & Legends, Military Aviation
On 4 October 1957, at 22:28 Moscow time, the R-7 rocket on Pad 1 at Tyuratam — the Kazakh launch facility the world would later know as Baikonur — lifted off carrying a 58.4 cm aluminium sphere with four trailing radio antennas and a 1 watt transmitter inside. The...
Aviation World, Military Aviation
Almost nobody outside Japan knows the ShinMaywa US-2 exists. It does not appear at international air shows. It is not exported. It has never fought in a war. It is not stealth. It does not break sound barriers. What it does do is land a 47-ton four-engined aircraft on...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On 22 June 1941, at 03:15 Moscow time, the Luftwaffe attacked sixty-six Soviet airfields. Over 1,200 Soviet aircraft were destroyed in the first twelve hours of Operation Barbarossa, most of them parked, most of them unable to take off. The Soviet aviation propaganda...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On 10 December 1963 a Lockheed NF-104A — an F-104 Starfighter with a rocket motor bolted to its tail — climbed away from Edwards Air Force Base in the California desert and started clawing for the edge of space. At the controls was Colonel Charles E....
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On the evening of 4 March 1957, a US Navy patrol blimp lifted off the apron at Naval Air Station South Weymouth, Massachusetts, and pointed itself east, towards the Atlantic Ocean. Its envelope was 343 feet long. Its registration was Bureau Number 141561 and its name,...
Aviation World, Military Aviation, News
The President of the United States is about to start flying around the world on a Qatari hand-me-down. Trump’s interim Air Force One is a former royal Boeing 747-8 from Doha that the Air Force is repainting red, white and blue because the actual Air Force Ones —...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On 23 February 2004, the Acting Secretary of the Army — a former Senate staffer and Vietnam veteran named Les Brownlee — stood at a Pentagon podium with the Army Chief of Staff, General Peter Schoomaker, and announced the cancellation of one of the most...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On the morning of December 31, 1986, the wind off the Negev was dry and cold and the tarmac at Ben Gurion International, on the IAI factory side, was thick with people in winter coats. A small, pale, beautifully proportioned fighter jet — nose canard, single...
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