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Socata Centenary

This year marks 100 years of continuous aircraft design and manufacturing by the famous French company Morane-Saulnier, now Daher-Socata. The Morane-Borel monoplane was the company’s very first aircraft; it was put in to limited production as the Morane-Saulnier Type A after the type proved successful in the 1911 Paris-Madrid air race in which Raymond Saulnier […]

F-4 still tows the mark

The 82nd Aerial Target Squadron (ATRS) based at Tyndall AFB, Florida, operates a fleet of surplus aerial target drones to train fighter pilots in the art of air-to-air combat. Some of these drones, designated QF-4, are now used to tow banner targets behind them to give pilots additional gunnery training. Originally built by the McDonnell […]

Helldiver arrives at Udvar-Hazy Museum

A Curtiss SB2C-5 Helldiver is the first resident in a new restoration hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) at Dulles International Airport in Virginia. The Helldiver aka “Beast” was transported from the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage facility in Maryland; this facility will eventually […]

First C-27J Spartan arrives late for duty

The first C-27J Spartan Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) to become operational with U.S. forces has arrived at Mansfield Lahm Regional Airport in Ohio. The Italian-built C-27J has been called a “Mini C-130” because it houses two engines (instead of four), and its propellers are identical to those of second-generation Hercules transports. Mansfield’s first aircraft (no. […]

Boeing rolls out 1,000th 767, begins new assembly line

When the 1,000th Boeing 767—a 767-300ER—rolled off the original assembly line, history was marked in two ways. The rollout marks 29 years of service for the venerable wide-body twinjet just as 767 production moves to a new, smaller bay design to improve efficiency. The 767 originally went into service in 1982, and it’s offered in […]

Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental is world’s newest jetliner

The largest ever Boeing airliner has made a successful first flight. The 4-hour 25-minute flight was from Boeing’s 747 production facilities at Paine Field in Everett, Washington, to Boeing’s developmental site at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington. This newest version of the 747 took off at 9:59 a.m. and landed at 2:24 p.m. local time. […]

Aerial Firebombers

August of 2001 saw us riding along with photographer/writer Ted Carlson as he flew in an entirely different theater of combat than what’s usually seen in Flight Journal: forest fire fighting. The enemy was no less lethal than the Axis powers and when the Grumman S-2F Trackers and helicopters of the California Department of […]

The Bridges at Toko-Ri – the rest of the story!

Having flown 100 combat missions during the brutally cold winter of 1950-51 in Korea on the same type of sorties as those described—I can readily understand the situation. The main difference is that we had to land under marginal weather conditions on wet/icy PSP runways but we faced the same flak and 50 cal guns […]

Run Over by a Carrier

Jerry ‘Turkey’ Tucker was with the Blue Angels during the last years of the F4’s then stayed on for the first two years of the A4. During Viet Nam he flew F8U’s. He’s now a senior Captain for Southwest. Here’s his incredible true story of falling off a carrier while inside his aircraft. yikes It […]