Featured News Archives - Page 29 of 286

F8 Wings Folded

On January 22, 1968, I was a young LTJG at Miramar, attached to Navy Fighter Squadron VF-53 preparing for a deployment to Vietnam aboard the USS Bon Homme Richard. As a final part of the pre-deployment regimen, all pilots were briefed to fly [ FMLP ] Field Mirror Landing Practice about 2100 that night. This was our last chance […]

Air Force Museum’s New D-Day Exhibit Features AR

In partnership with the Paris, France-based technology company Histovery, the Air Force Museum Foundation will open a new interactive augmented reality exhibit titled “D-Day: Freedom from Above,” at 9 a.m. on Monday, May 13 in the second building of the National Museum of the U.S. Air ForceTM. The U.S. premiere of this exhibit has been made […]

Arizona Commemorative Air Force Museum

On the southwest corner of Falcon Field Airport in Mesa, Arizona, are the 55,000-square-foot hangars of the Arizona Commemorative Air Force Museum (AZCAF). As part of the museum established in Texas, this museum was started in 1977, with the restoration of a B-17G Fortress named “Sentimental Journey.” Despite the vintage aircraft behind a chain-link fence, […]

Forgotten DC-3 Caught on Camera

Lying on a black sandy beach in the south of Iceland, the wreckage of a crashed U.S. Navy aircraft looks like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. Amazingly, the crew all survived the impact, when the Douglas Super DC-3 was forced to crash land on Sólheimasandur beach on Nov. 24, 1973. But the plane was abandoned rather than recovered, […]

Looking Back: Project FICON

U.S. Navy aircraft carriers are a dominant presence in waters around the world, and interestingly enough, the Air Force once tried to make a flying version. During World War II, bomber aircraft could fly thousands of miles to their targets, unlike gas-guzzling fighters, which had much shorter ranges. This was a big problem for bombers, since they were sitting […]

Rare WW II film: Luftwaffe Aircraft and Ground Crew

Here’s something you don’t see every day. A taste of the WW II front lines from the Luftwaffe’s point of view. This rare WW II German film (with audio), showis Luftwaffe Stukas, Ju 88 s, Bf 109 s, Bf 110 s in aerial action. Also included German ground crew fueling Stuka dive bombers, as well […]

Update: B-29 “Doc” Ride flights

The beautifully restored B-29 Doc Superfortress continues to be an airshow superstar and the first B-29 Doc ride dates for 2019 will be in Wichita at the new B-29 Doc Hangar and Education Center this spring. The B-29 Doc Flight Experience ride program will kick off the 2019 flying season two weekends in April: Saturday, […]

World War II – The Pioneer Jets

The history of technology is replete with a concept called “multiple independent discovery.” Examples are the incandescent lightbulb by the American inventor Thomas Edison and the British inventor Joseph Swan in 1879, and the computer by Briton Alan Turing and Polish-American Emil Post in 1936. During the 1930s, on opposite sides of the English Channel, […]

P-51 Mustang – An old war horse in its second war, free screen saver

The Mustang soldiered on longer than any other WWII fighter and we tend to forget its valuable role in Korea. There, most of the airplanes and their pilots were replaying roles they had executed so well only five years earlier in various parts of the globe. In Korea they were very much showing the patina […]

Rockoons: A Short Chapter in Atmospheric Research

At first glance, rockets and balloons would appear to be entirely separate technological species that would have little to do with one another. A modern rocket is a highly complex feat of engineering and, if powerful enough, can escape the Earth altogether. A balloon is as simple as simple gets (within reason), but even modern […]