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Peter Teichman pulls in close to the cameraship
in his Mustang, painted as “Jumpin’ Jacques.” Teichman’s Mustang, his first acquisition for the
North Weald, England-based Hangar 11 Collection,
is unique as it is one of only a few Mustangs with
combat history. It still carries the field repairs from battle scars she received while flying with the 332nd Fighter Group. (Photo by John Dibbs/facebook.com/theplanepicture)

South Pacific Warrior: A rare combat Mustang

“We’d fly over the target, level, and the target would go under the wing. We’d be slowing down, and slowing down, pull up, and just do a wing over. Slightly beyond the target, pull over, and then come straight down. We had a gun sight, but [we’d] just line the target up on the seam […]

Night Hunter — the first Corsair equipped with radar

Hunched in the cockpit of an F4U-2 Corsair in the darkest, blackest night he could remember, Second Lieutenant Frank Lang peered at the 6-inch scope in the center of his instrument panel and saw nothing significant to break up the green-yellow line inscribing a circle around the dial.

Kittyhawk Jungle Rescue

Confined in a microworld of levers, switches, and instruments, Royal Australian Air Force Flight Sergeant James Denman Harvey slid his Curtiss P-40’s eight-piece canopy backwards and looked down. Hammered by tropical heat and skin slippery in perspiration, he studied the surface of a newly captured airstrip called “Tadji.” Harvey and fellow No. 78 Squadron pilots […]

SAAB 37 Viggen – The Bird of Many Feathers

Sweden is an aeronautically unique country. After WW II, the military realized that it needed better equipment to protect the nation, so beginning in 1946, the Air Force became one of the world’s largest operators of the most state-of-the-art fighter available, the P-51 Mustang. However, while doting over what were probably the most pristine Mustangs […]

DeHavilland DH84 Dragon

Many British and Commonwealth air routes were established by airlines using de Havilland’s 6-passenger seat, twin-engine biplane, the DH84 Dragon. The Dragon’s first flight (November 1932) pre-dated the better-known DH89 Dragon Rapide (or Dominie in military service) by two years, although both aircraft made their maiden flights at the DH airfield of Stag Lane in […]

America’s Few: Marine Aces of the South Pacific

Written by aviation historian Bill Yenne, “America’s Few” is a new book from Osprey Publishing that delves into the history of U.S. Marine Corps aviation in World War II, following the feats of the Corps’ top-scoring aces in the skies over Guadalcanal. Marine Corps aviation began in 1915, functioning as a self-contained expeditionary force. During […]

Bad Kitty! VF-19 “Satan’s Kittens”

VF-19 “Satan’s Kittens” Chew Up the Enemy “I had well over 1,000 hours of time in the air before I entered combat. Most of that was as an instrument instructor flying the SNJ. Instrument flying really teaches you the finer points of flying an airplane. It also makes you focus and for some reason I […]

Stearman PT-17/N2S: The Biplane With So Many Lives

The PT-17 Stearman is literally the airplane that has always seemed to just be “there.” Although, it is most often thought of as the school marm that taught a generation of airmen the skills necessary to win a war, she has actually lived three distinct lives and is entering a fourth, from military trainer to […]

Airspeeder Mk. 4 Racing eVTOL

We’ve seen many genres of racing, from the Indy 500 to power boat racing, Reno air racing to motorcycles steeply leaning into curves, and so it may have been inevitable that electric-powered Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) racers would emerge as another facet of advanced air mobility. Designed and built in Adelaide, South Australia, the […]

B-21 Design Details

A newly released Northrop Grumman B-21 picture published March 7 offers the first clear view of both of the bomber’s unique air inlets, which are shaped like sideways teardrops. The image appeared in a presentation by Gen. C.Q. Brown, the Air Force chief of staff, who addressed the Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado. The designers […]