From the Magazine Archives - Page 2 of 17

North American Aviation X-15 Space Age Pioneer

The experimental X-15 carried the first human into the weightless realm above. Devoid of the oxygen essential to life, space is defined as beginning at an altitude of 62 miles. Many of the 199 missions (each was brief) penetrated the inky black boundary of outer space. Eight of the dozen X-15 pilots were ultimately awarded […]

Grumman Wildcat: Free Online Artwork

William Wylam was the past master of the detailed three-view drawing. For nearly forty years, he produced amazing pieces of artwork, many of them for Model Airplane News, Flight Journal’s sister publication. Some of them go back to the 1930s. The detail, accuracy, and clarity are awe-inspiring. This time around, we’re posting his drawing of the […]

Post D-Day Fighter Conference

What we have here is an executive retreat held in Bottisham, Cambridgeshire, home of the 361st FG, August 1944. It is a get-together of all fighter group COs in the 8th Air Force and represents a who’s who of Post D-Day fighter aviation. Front to back: 20th FG (Col. Harold Rau’s Gentle Annie), 352nd FG […]

A US Air Force McDonnell Douglas F-4D Phantom II, Minnesota ANG 66-647, cruises in the wild blue yonder.

Trolling for SAMs

It was another humid day, with the smells of Thailand heavy in the morning air as I walked into the Triple Nickel Fighter Squadron building at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base (RTAFB) in northeast Thailand. The 555th was the top MiG-killer squadron, but hunting had been scarce since I joined them earlier in the […]

Burma Banshees

The 90th Fighter Squadron in the CBI In the beginning of June 1944, while the 90th Fighter Squadron was based at Moran in India, the unit started to receive brand-new P-47s to replace its tired and obsolescent P-40Ns decorated with a painted skull on their hoods. On June 8, Lt. Col. Albert L. Evans Jr. […]

Hellcat at Work – free wallpaper!

The mighty Grumman F6F Hellcat needs no introduction. It carried the fight to the enemy throughout the Pacific and emerged as the most successful fighter of the Pacific Theater of Operations. More important, it was the airplane that could be counted on to bring a pilot home almost regardless of the amount of damage it […]

WW II Pilot Bernie Sledzick – Little Guy in a Big Airplane

Back then, junior year of high school should have been filled with coming-of-age memories, football pep rallies, and homecoming dances. Visiting colleges, choosing high-school sweethearts, and exploring possible careers should have been in the thoughts of soon-to-be seniors. Pearl Harbor changed all that. The very real world war and deciding to fight his country’s enemies […]

The Pilot’s View of Iconic Aircraft – Fighting Cockpits

The combat-aircraft cockpit has some sort of magical attraction to all who fly and those who would like to fly. It is the throne room in which aerial warriors, both past and present, sat and engaged in that rare form of combat that is built around the third dimension. It was—and is—man and machine wielding […]

Rare Bird: Pitcairn Autogiro

“This is a real prehistoric monster in flight. Once the helicopter was built, these autogiros became dinosaurs,” stated the late Jack Tiffany of Spring Valley, Ohio, at the time, co-owner (with Jim Hammond of Yellow Springs, Ohio) of the Pitcairn PA-18 N1267B (c/n G-65), the only example of the type flying in the U.S., when […]

Flying the B-47

For many, the B-47 Stratojet was the most impressive aircraft of the day. It was the Air Force’s first jet powered bomber and it took replaced the propeller and jet driven B-36 Peacemaker. For this article, the multi-faceted Walt Boyne, known as a familiar face on many TV aviation documentaries as the former Director of […]