On January 25, 1966, test pilot Bill Weaver was flying an SR-71 Blackbird at 78,000 feet over New Mexico at Mach 3.18. Behind him sat reconnaissance systems officer Jim Zwayer. They were testing a new navigation system when the aircraft's right engine suffered a...
The aircraft was 6.07 metres long. It carried a 1,200-kilogram warhead in its nose. The cockpit had a basic compass, an airspeed indicator, and a single switch that started three solid-fuel rocket motors. There was no landing gear. There was no parachute. The pilot,...
Bessie Coleman walked into every flying school in Chicago and was turned away from every one. The year was 1919. No American flight school would accept a student who was both Black and a woman. Most would not accept her for either reason alone. A lesser person would...
On 27 September 1956, Captain Mel Apt of the US Air Force became the first human being to fly faster than three times the speed of sound. He was at 65,000 feet over Edwards Air Force Base, in California, dropped from beneath the wing of a Boeing B-50 Superfortress,...
Take a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress. Remove the nose. Bolt a jet engine where the bombardier used to sit. Now fly it. That is not a thought experiment. From 1947 to 1966, the Curtiss-Wright Corporation did exactly that — operating a modified B-17G as an airborne...
One hundred years ago today — 9 May 1926 — a Fokker F.VII trimotor named Josephine Ford took off from a snow strip on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, climbed to 1,500 feet, and disappeared north into the Arctic dawn. Fifteen and a half hours later it landed back...
The morning of 16 April 1912 was perfect — or so it seemed. Harriet Quimby stood at Folkestone, England, in her trademark plum-coloured flying suit, preparing to become the first woman to fly the English Channel. There was one problem. Fog had rolled in over the...
You know what a B-17 looks like. Four radial engines. Twin tail. Glass nose. Heavy-bomber Americana, stamped onto a thousand black-and-white photographs of the daylight raids over Germany. Now picture one with a fifth engine bolted to its nose — a giant turboprop, or...
On 13 May 1940, a Russian-born immigrant in his early fifties stood in a field in Stratford, Connecticut, climbed into a flimsy contraption made of welded steel tubing, and lifted himself one and a half metres into the air. He hovered for fifteen seconds, set the...
Three were built. Three flew. One crashed. Two went into storage. None ever entered service. The Lockheed YF-12 is one of those aircraft that should have rewritten the book on continental air defence and instead became a footnote — overshadowed by the SR-71 Blackbird...
On 10 January 1964, a B-52H Stratofortress assigned to the 4239th Strategic Wing was on a routine training flight over the Susquehanna Valley in Maryland when it flew into the worst clear-air turbulence anyone aboard had ever experienced. There was no warning, no...
On 1 November 1950, UN pilots over North Korea encountered something they had not expected: a swept-wing jet fighter faster, more agile, and better armed than anything in their inventory. The MiG-15 appeared above the Yalu River — the border between North Korea and...
There is a photograph from the Second World War that stops you in your tracks. A young man sits in what looks like an oversized tin can, mounted on a swivelling platform, aiming a machine gun at a target while the entire contraption bucks and wobbles beneath him. He...
Rheinmetall's stock peaked at €1,930 in March 2025. It is trading today at €1,180 — a 39 percent fall in fourteen months. BAE Systems is down 22 percent over the same period. Saab is down 18 percent. Leonardo is down 14 percent. Thales is flat. This is happening while...
It was the fastest fighter at low level in the Royal Air Force inventory, faster than the Spitfire below 15,000 feet. It carried four 20mm cannons in its nose — twice the firepower of any other British fighter. It first flew in October 1938 and entered service in...
The aircraft sits on its tail in the hangar. The pilot climbs a ladder, then climbs another, until he is sitting almost flat on his back, looking straight up at the hangar ceiling. He starts two contra-rotating turboprops driving 16-foot propellers. He releases the...
Glue two P-51 Mustangs together along the wing. Share a tailplane between them. Put the radio operator's seat in the right fuselage. Tell the pilot in the left fuselage to fly the aircraft. The result is the F-82 Twin Mustang — the longest-range piston fighter ever...
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