History & Legends, Military Aviation
The Bell AH-1 Cobra is the most consequential helicopter design in American military history. Before the Cobra, every armed helicopter in the world was a transport airframe with weapons bolted onto it — a Huey with door guns, a Mi-4 with rocket pods, a Wessex with...
Aviation World, Military Aviation
When two aircraft collide in mid-air — as happened recently with an EA-18G Growler at Mountain Home Air Force Base — the debris field can stretch for miles. Pieces of aluminum, wiring, and avionics scatter across terrain in patterns that look random to the untrained...
Aviation World, History & Legends, Military Aviation
Most people assume that becoming a pilot requires good eyesight and a steady hand. That much is true. What most people don’t realize is just how deep the medical rabbit hole goes — and how some of the conditions that can ground you are genuinely surprising. From...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
The North American XB-70 Valkyrie was supposed to be the future of strategic bombing — a six-engine colossus that could outrun anything in the sky at three times the speed of sound. Instead, it became one of aviation’s most expensive might-have-beens, and its...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
The most ambitious naval aviation concept the United States ever fielded was not the nuclear-powered supercarrier. It was a 785-foot helium airship with an interior hangar bay full of biplane fighters that could be launched and recovered in flight. There were two of...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
Bill Allen, Boeing’s president, was watching the hydroplane races on Lake Washington from a company yacht on 7 August 1955. The new Boeing 367-80 — the prototype of what would become the 707 — was scheduled to fly overhead in a demonstration for potential airline...
History & Legends, Military Aviation
On August 3, 1945, a Japanese test pilot named Masayoshi Tsuruno climbed into the strangest fighter prototype Japan had ever built and pushed the throttle forward. The aircraft trundled along the runway at Kyūshū Aircraft Company’s Mushiroda Airfield, lifted its...
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