Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
On 21 May 1995, on a frozen lake 280 miles north of Thule, Greenland, a B-29 Superfortress that had not moved in forty-eight years swung onto its makeshift ice runway under its own power. Four rebuilt engines ran sweetly. Half a century of Arctic exile was about to...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
Just after eight on the morning of 29 April 1975, American Radio Service in Saigon interrupted its programming to announce that the temperature was “105 degrees and rising.” Then it played White Christmas. In a city where it never snows, in the last April...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
Saturday morning, 28 July 1945. New York is wrapped in fog so thick that the top third of the Empire State Building has simply vanished. At 9:40 a.m., office workers on the 79th floor hear a sound no office worker should ever hear: aircraft engines, close, and getting...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
On the morning of 16 August 1966, an Iraqi Air Force captain named Munir Redfa strapped into his MiG-21F-13 for what his squadron believed was a routine long-range training sortie. He had full fuel tanks — a privilege he had rarely been granted — and a...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
For three decades during the Cold War, Britain’s nuclear deterrent rested on the wings of three extraordinary aircraft: the Vickers Valiant, the Avro Vulcan, and the Handley Page Victor. Known collectively as the V-bombers, they were designed to carry atomic and...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
The Handley Page Victor was the last and most advanced of Britain’s three V-bombers — and the one with the longest career. Designed to carry nuclear weapons to Moscow at high altitude, it outlived its original mission by decades, reinventing itself as the Royal...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
With 36,183 examples built, the Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik is the most-produced military aircraft in history — and arguably the most important ground-attack platform of the Second World War. Soviet infantry called it “the flying tank.” German soldiers called...
Monde de l'aviation, Histoire et légendes
For more than half a century, the Boeing 747 was the largest and most recognisable commercial aircraft on Earth. From its first flight in 1969 to its final delivery in January 2023, the “Queen of the Skies” carried billions of passengers, opened...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk was never the fastest, highest-climbing, or most manoeuvrable fighter of the Second World War. What it was, in every theatre from North Africa to China to the Aleutians, was available — and in the hands of pilots who understood its strengths,...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
The Convair B-58 Hustler was the world’s first operational supersonic bomber — a Mach 2 delta-wing marvel that could outrun every interceptor of its era. It was also one of the most dangerous aircraft in the United States Air Force inventory, killing more than...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
On the morning of 3 July 1988, Iran Air Flight 655 lifted off from Bandar Abbas International Airport bound for Dubai — a routine 28-minute hop across the Strait of Hormuz. Seven minutes later, the Airbus A300 was falling out of the sky in pieces, struck by two SM-2...
Histoire et légendes, Aviation militaire
Twenty Sea Harriers sailed south with the Royal Navy task force in April 1982. None of them should have survived. The Argentine Air Force outnumbered them five to one, flew faster jets, and operated from concrete runways while the British pilots launched from pitching...
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