In 1961 the Soviet Union flew an aircraft with a working nuclear reactor on board. The aircraft was a modified Tupolev Tu-95 Bear, redesignated Tu-95LAL — Letayushchaya Atomnaya Laboratoriya, or "Flying Atomic Laboratory." The reactor sat in the rear of the bomb bay....

The British, in the 1950s, came up with one of the most elegant interceptor concepts of the early jet age — and then, in a moment of breathtaking strategic clumsiness, threw the entire programme away. The aircraft was the Saunders-Roe SR.53, a small, beautiful, and...

Of all the strange aircraft the United States built during the Second World War — and there were many — none was stranger, on paper or in person, than the Northrop XP-79. The XP-79 was, in concept, a manned missile. Its mission was not to shoot down enemy bombers with...