El día en que murió la aviación naval japonesa

El día en que murió la aviación naval japonesa

Son poco después de las diez de la mañana del 19 de junio de 1944, y el teniente (grado inferior) Alexander Vraciu sobrevuela el mar de Filipinas en un avión azul, con la capucha puesta y la máscara de oxígeno bien ajustada, en plena caza. Debajo y delante de su Grumman F6F Hellcat, un grupo disperso de aviones de combate japoneses...
The Jet With Its Wings on Backwards

The Jet With Its Wings on Backwards

Roll the X-29 onto its back and the wings look wrong. Not damaged, not folded for storage — just backwards. Where every other jet on the ramp sweeps its wings rearward like an arrowhead, the X-29 sweeps them forward, the tips reaching out ahead of the roots as...
The Aircraft That Had No Wings

The Aircraft That Had No Wings

It is the morning of 18 September 1972, on a Dornier test field beside Lake Constance. There is no cockpit to climb into, no pilot to brief. The machine on the apron looks less like an aircraft than a fat steel cigar laid on its side: a smooth cylindrical body roughly...
Airbus Pulls the Pilot from the H145

Airbus Pulls the Pilot from the H145

Walk the static line at ILA Berlin and you expect the usual choreography around a helicopter: a pilot strapping in, a crew chief signalling, the slow whine of an Arriel engine spooling up. This June, Airbus parked something stranger under the Brandenburg sun. The...