In December 1941, a German engineer handed the Reich Air Ministry a several-hundred-page report describing a way to bomb New York from the edge of space. The weapon would be launched off a two-mile rail, rocket to the fringe of the atmosphere at some 24 times the...
Everyone remembers Charles Lindbergh. Almost nobody remembers the three men who, a year later, flew the Atlantic the hard way — against the wind, from Europe to America — and nearly died doing it. Their aircraft was called the Bremen, and their forgotten...
Ask anyone to name Britain’s heavy bomber of the Second World War and they will say the Avro Lancaster — the Dam Busters’ mount, the star of every film and airshow flypast. Almost nobody says Handley Page Halifax. Yet the Halifax flew tens of...
Most warplanes are lucky to see one war. The Douglas A-26 Invader saw three — World War II, Korea and Vietnam — the only American bomber ever to do so. Now one of these remarkable survivors has a new home: the Stockton Field Aviation Museum in...
In December 1941, a German engineer handed the Reich Air Ministry a several-hundred-page report describing a way to bomb New York from the edge of space. The weapon would be launched off a two-mile rail, rocket to the fringe of the atmosphere at some 24 times the...
In August 1944, a young Minnesotan named Ken Dahlberg shot down three German aircraft in a single swirling dogfight, took a bullet through his oil system, and bailed out into the clouds over occupied France. Sheltered by the Resistance and — by one account...
Some aircraft are ugly by accident. The Blackburn Blackburn was ugly on purpose — and yes, that really is its name, not a printing error. A deep, slab-sided box of a biplane that looked like a garden shed had learned to fly, it is a perennial contender for the...
The biggest aircraft the Axis powers ever built was not a bomber or a transport — it was a flying boat the size of a small ship, hauled into the air on six engines by a company that normally built ocean liners. And when an American fighter pilot finally sank it...
Imagine buying an airline ticket and being shown not to a seat in the fuselage, but into the wing itself — a little cabin built into the leading edge, with a big curved window giving you the pilot’s own view of the world rushing toward you. That was the...
On 17 May 1935, the man who would later write The Little Prince climbed aboard the largest aircraft on Earth. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in Moscow reporting for a French newspaper, was the only foreigner allowed onto the Tupolev ANT-20 “Maxim Gorky” —...
In December 1941, a German engineer handed the Reich Air Ministry a several-hundred-page report describing a way to bomb New York from the edge of space. The weapon would be launched off a two-mile rail, rocket to the fringe of the atmosphere at some 24 times the...
It looked like a four-poster bed welded out of scaffolding, and it flew by balancing on a column of jet blast. When the Rolls-Royce Thrust Measuring Rig lurched into the air at Hucknall in 1954, it became the first jet-lift aircraft to fly anywhere in the world...
Take a V-1 flying bomb — the pilotless cruise missile that terrorised London in 1944 — and cut a small hole in the fuselage just ahead of the engine. Fit a plywood seat, a single control column, and a handful of basic instruments. Now put a young man...
Somewhere over Germany in the last winter of the war, four P-51 Mustangs slid in behind a lone, unfamiliar fighter and prepared to pounce. The pilot did not turn to dogfight. He pushed the throttle to the stop, triggered a chemical boost that shoved extra horsepower...
On 30 April 1958, a gleaming four-engined jet was rolled out of a hangar in Dresden to great fanfare. It was called the 152, and it was meant to announce East Germany’s arrival as a builder of modern airliners — a socialist answer to the Comet and the...
A stealth fighter’s first taxi run is not glamorous. It rolls out of the hangar, creeps down the taxiway under its own power, and stops. But for Turkey, the sight of its second Kaan prototype trundling along the apron at Ankara on Jul. 31, 2026 was a big deal...
For decades Japan built warships bristling with missile cells and used them only to shoot things down. That just changed. On Jul. 29, 2026, the destroyer JS Chōkai fired a Tomahawk cruise missile into the Pacific — the first time a Japanese warship has ever...
France’s special forces are about to get a very different kind of helicopter. On Jul. 30, 2026, Airbus Helicopters announced the delivery of the first NH90 Caïman Standard 2 — a purpose-built special-operations version of France’s standard...
It is one of the least glamorous aircraft in the sky and one of the most useful: a boxy, high-wing twin that lands in under a thousand feet, seats nine, and turns up wearing airline colours, army camouflage and even spy fits. Now, for the first time in almost sixty...
For four months, one of Europe’s larger air forces was fighting a quiet air-defence campaign over the Arabian Peninsula — and almost nobody noticed. Since the second half of March 2026, Italy has kept Eurofighter Typhoons, an early-warning aircraft and a...