The future of the last Martin Mars water bomber still in service is uncertain, now that Canada’s British Columbia provincial government has given notice that this is the last summer the aircraft, based in Port Alberni, will be given a direct-award contract. Wayne Coulson, owner of the 1940s-era aircraft that’s based on the Martin JRM Mars four-engined cargo […]

1909 – Birth of Valentina Stepanovna Grizodubova, one of the first female pilots in the Soviet Union and a World War II pilot. 1913 – First bombing attack against a surface ship: Didier Masson and Captain Joaquín Bauche Alcalde, flying for Mexican Revolutionist Venustiano Carranza, dropped dynamite bombs on Federalist gunboats at Guaymas, Mexico. 1961 – A Convair B-58 Hustler (shown above) cruises at a speed of 1,302 […]

1888 – Birth of Francesco Baracca, Italy’s top fighter ace of World War I, credited with 34 aerial victories. 1926 – Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett make the first flight over the North Pole in a Fokker F.VIIa-3 m. Their total distance from Spitzbergen, Norway, is 1,600 miles. 1943 – A German night fighter crew defects to the U.K., flying a Junkers Ju 88R-1. The defection gives British scientists and tacticians access to a Lichtenstein airborne interception radar for […]

The sequester won’t stop a beloved tradition after all. For a time, it was looking like this year’s U.S. Air Force Academy’s graduating cadets would not get to have a flyover at their commencement ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colo., due to the sequester grounding the Thunderbirds demonstration team. But now two museums, one local and one […]