Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
Late in the afternoon of 7 June 1981, eight Israeli F-16s are skimming the desert at rooftop height, fuel gauges a constant worry. Flying the last and most exposed aircraft in the formation is the youngest of them, a 27-year-old named Ilan Ramon, who has done the...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
Il est presque onze heures, dans la nuit du 11 novembre 1940, et le lieutenant de vaisseau Kenneth “ Hooch ” Williamson fait descendre son Fairey Swordfish à travers la DCA au-dessus du port de Tarente. Des fusées éclairantes au magnésium flottent dans le ciel, projetant les navires ancrés….
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
It is a little after dawn on 15 August 1945, and a flight of Grumman F6F Hellcats is droning north over the haze of Tokyo Bay. In the cockpits are young U.S. Navy pilots of Air Group 88, launched from the carrier USS Yorktown to strike airfields near the Japanese...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
In September 1944, with Allied bombers reducing German cities to rubble and the Luftwaffe haemorrhaging experienced pilots at an unsustainable rate, the Reich Air Ministry issued one of the most desperate specifications in aviation history: design a jet fighter that...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
On 15 April 1988, a modified Tupolev Tu-154 airliner took off from Moscow’s Zhukovsky airfield with one of its three engines running on liquid hydrogen. It climbed to altitude, flew a circuit, and landed without incident. The aircraft was designated Tu-155, and...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
On the night of 11 November 1940, twenty-one Fairey Swordfish biplanes — fabric-covered, open-cockpit torpedo bombers with a top speed of 139 miles per hour — attacked the Italian fleet at anchor in Taranto harbour. When they were done, three battleships were sinking,...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
We have written before about the F-8 Crusader’s legendary status as the “Last of the Gunfighters” — the Navy jet that went to war over Vietnam armed primarily with four 20 mm Colt Mk 12 cannon when every other fighter in the fleet was transitioning...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
The Germans had a word for it. They always do. When Luftwaffe pilots talked about the Panavia Tornado, they called it the eierlegende Wollmilchsau — the “egg-laying wool-milk pig.” A mythical creature that does everything: lays eggs, produces wool, gives...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
Mouammar Kadhafi a tracé une ligne à travers la Méditerranée et a mis au défi la marine américaine de la franchir. La marine l'a franchie à deux reprises. À chaque fois, les F-14 Tomcat ont répondu. Les deux incidents du golfe de Syrte — en 1981 et 1989 — sont les seules victoires aériennes américaines des années 1980.
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
It is a grey morning at Bremen, late in the summer of 1971. On the concrete apron stands a stubby, hunched little jet, its camouflage still factory-fresh, the marking VAK 191 B painted along the nose. Three engines spool up at once and the noise is physically violent...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
It is just after ten in the morning on 19 June 1944, and Lieutenant (junior grade) Alexander Vraciu is hanging in the blue over the Philippine Sea, hood back, oxygen mask tight, hunting. Below and ahead of his Grumman F6F Hellcat, a loose gaggle of Japanese dive...
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