Geschichte & Legenden, Militärische Luftfahrt
In the mid-1970s, two American planemakers built four extraordinary transport prototypes that could land almost anywhere and stop almost immediately. Both designs worked brilliantly. Both lost. And then one of them quietly went on to father one of the most successful...
Luftfahrtwelt, Geschichte & Legenden
The passengers on BOAC Flight 911 were promised a treat: a close-up view of Mount Fuji, gleaming under a brilliant blue sky. Minutes later, the sky that looked so calm tore their Boeing 707 apart. The disaster of 5 March 1966 is one of aviation’s starkest...
Geschichte & Legenden, Militärische Luftfahrt
Amid the Mirages, Skyhawks and Super Étendards of the 1982 Falklands War, the scrappiest Argentine aircraft of all was a stubby twin-turboprop that looked like it belonged in a different decade. The FMA IA 58 Pucará was slow, propeller-driven, and utterly outclassed...
Geschichte & Legenden, Militärische Luftfahrt
In June 1981, a young Israeli pilot flew the most exposed position in one of the most audacious air raids in history. Twenty-two years later, that same man carried a Torah scroll that had survived a concentration camp into orbit — and never came home. Between...
Geschichte & Legenden, Militärische Luftfahrt
It was a routine training flight on a grey winter afternoon. Three American airmen took off from Wiesbaden in an unarmed little jet, expecting to be back in three hours. They never came home. The shootdown of a U.S. Air Force T-39 Sabreliner over East Germany on 28...
Geschichte & Legenden, Militärische Luftfahrt
Sometimes the most valuable aircraft is the one that proves an idea wrong. The tiny Northrop X-4 Bantam is exactly that: a jet built to test a tempting theory about the sound barrier, which flew well enough to demonstrate, conclusively, that the theory was a dead end....
Geschichte & Legenden, Militärische Luftfahrt
On the last day of 1986, a sleek new fighter lifted off from a runway in Israel and climbed into a clear desert sky. It handled beautifully. It was, by many accounts, world-class. Eight months later, its own government voted to kill it — by a single vote. The...
Geschichte & Legenden, Militärische Luftfahrt
It looked like a beer barrel with wings, and the Swedes said so themselves — they called it Flygande Tunnan, the “Flying Barrel.” But behind that comical shape hid a serious pioneer: the first swept-wing fighter to enter squadron service anywhere in...
Geschichte & Legenden, Militärische Luftfahrt
Line the Tupolev Tu-128 up next to the bombers it was built to shoot down, and you might struggle to tell the hunter from the prey. At nearly 30 metres long and around 43 tonnes, this Soviet interceptor was bigger and heavier than many of the aircraft it was meant to...
Geschichte & Legenden, Militärische Luftfahrt
In 1997, the Russian government formally cancelled the fighter that was supposed to answer the American F-22. Three years later, in front of an invited crowd at Zhukovsky, that cancelled fighter took off anyway. The Mikoyan 1.44 is one of aviation’s strangest...
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