From the Magazine

Aviation Insider: F-35 Lightning II

Aviation Insider: F-35 Lightning II

When the 100th F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter was delivered, it was a “big deal for the Air Force,” said chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh. Welsh is the most visible face and the strongest voice supporting the F-35. A respected fighter pilot, Welsh is trying to steer his service at a time when […]
Supermarine Spitfire – Free Wylam Drawing

Supermarine Spitfire – Free Wylam Drawing

Somewhere there is probably a list of the world’s most beautiful airplanes but the process of selecting those airplanes has undoubtedly prompted numerous fistfights. However, when it came to putting the Spitfire on, or at the top, of the list, it’s doubtful anyone anywhere disagreed. Reginald Mitchell created a piece of art as much as […]
A Role of the Dice

A Role of the Dice

A lucky Liberator crew survives When Allied airmen strapped on their aircraft for a combat mission during World War II, especially when piloting a heavy bomber like the B-24 Liberator over the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, the situation usually provoked the same thoughts from pilots and crew members alike. “Will we get this overloaded […]
The Ever-Present Sidewinder

The Ever-Present Sidewinder

Kern County, California, 1952: a 1949 Kaiser raced down a desert runway with a streamlined object fitted to a crude bracket on the right side. Lacking a wind tunnel, the passengers — engineers in the front and back seats — took notes on the model’s aerodynamic performance. They were testing the XAAM-N-7, the world’s first […]
Idiot’s Loop

Idiot’s Loop

The Day I Nuked Los Angeles During the early 1950s, I fooled around with football, girls, and socializing while I was attending college and really didn’t know what I wanted to do in my life. When I saw the Korean War movie The Bridges at Toko-Ri, I knew right then I wanted to be a […]
Splash One Dreamboat

Splash One Dreamboat

In a bizarre sequence of events, under orders, a P-61 Black Widow shoots down a B-29 Super Fort off of Iwo Jima. Arvid Shulenberger was at the controls of the night fighter turned Fort destroyer and in the October 2001 issue of Flight Journal, he tells, in his own words, how he came to shepherd […]
P-51 Mustang – An old war horse in its second war, free screen saver

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

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 […]
In Theater: Chariots of the Vanquished

In Theater: Chariots of the Vanquished

By Stan Piet By mid-August 1945, the Japanese Empire was near collapse. Months of sustained bombing and two atomic attacks had devastated its prime cities and a widening blockade was strangling its faltering war industry and starving citizens. But Tokyo’s ingrained militaristic “fight to the death culture” still held sway, and an all out invasion […]
The Race for The Secrets

The Race for The Secrets

Disarming and Digesting the Luftwaffe. The gathering of German aviation technology by the United States in the final days of World War II was not a happenstance. As early as October 1944, the AAF created the Air Disarmament Division in England with a two-fold mission: collect examples of German technology, and scrap everything else that […]
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