On August 22, 1972, at the Zhukovsky flight test center outside Moscow, a colossal aircraft unlike anything the Western world had ever seen rolled onto the runway. Its drooping nose -- eerily similar to the Concorde's -- was raised for takeoff position. Four Kolesov...

The deck crew on USS Hancock froze as the Cutlass approached from astern, its twin vertical fins silhouetted against a Pacific sunset in the summer of 1955. Lieutenant Commander Jay Alkire lined up his approach, but the underpowered Westinghouse engines couldn't...

The glue was still wet when test pilot Gotthold Peter strapped himself into the cockpit on December 10, 1944. The Heinkel He 162 had made its maiden flight just four days earlier — ninety days after the first design drawings had been submitted — and the...