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Drones: Technology Changes the Face of Combat

Drones are not, as is often assumed, a 21st-century development. Far from it. Their history goes back more than 100 years, but the rate at which they are changing our everyday life continues to accelerate. So we thought it is worth looking back and seeing where the concept came from, how it developed, and where […]

DC-3 Gooney – Memories of First Flight

Everyone has a first flight: Mine was in a Gooney Life is a million episodes stitched together to form a ragged continuum. However, regardless of how many episodes are involved, there is always the first one. This is especially true of those of us who have lived a sizeable portion of our lives in the […]

Loves the Oil Hawks!

When I saw the article on Al Williams, I remembered some photos and information given to me by the wife of Al’s son, Jack, back in the 80’s. I had met Jack when he and his family were living in Charlotte, NC, and he shared with me some of the fascinating photos and stories of […]

Restored Speed Wing Built for Final Flights

When the time comes, there is something to be said for going out in style. Richard Zeiler has just the ride for that. Zeiler, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who flew a Cessna L-19 Bird Dog in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969, spent the better part of a quarter century leading a team of […]

What is the Aircraft?

Attached is a picture of my father (tall fellow standing) on an aircraft that appears to be shot down. My father immigrated from Denmark and joined the Canadian Army, 9 Canadian Field Squadron R.C.E.,formed in England April 1943. I know he was serving during the campaign in Italy. This picture came to my attention just last week […]

Travel Air A-6000A: Back from the Aerial Dead

Looking back at the Travel Air Manufacturing Company of the late 1920s from this end of history’s telescope, it looks like an aviation dream team. Of course, at the time, there was no way to know that each of the company’s founders, Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna and Lloyd Stearman would go on to become aviation […]

Bomber Crew: A Day in Their Lives

B-17 crewmen remember the German missions Aboard each of the thousands of B-17 Flying Fortresses that left the soil of England bound for targets in Europe were 10 young men. Outwardly, they were no different from any late-teen or early-twenties boy you’d meet anywhere in America. Same faces, same names, same youthful vigor and sense […]

Pearl Harbor: the Sleeping Giant Awakens

War was coming to the ocean called “Pacific.” Imperial Japan, in need of oil to feed its growing ambition, squirmed under the stricture of an American embargo (implemented because of Japan’s aggression toward China). Japan would not be denied its self-proclaimed destiny, so Tokyo’s warlords cast covetous eyes southward to the petroleum-rich Dutch East Indies, […]

USAF Grounds T-6A Texan II Aircraft

The Air Force grounded T-6A Texan II flying operations Nov. 15 after pilots reported oxygen problems — the fourth incident since Nov. 1. According to officials of the 71st Flying Training Wing at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma, four instructor pilots and one student pilot reported physiological incidents while flying. “Vance Air Force Base is […]

Flight Journal’s Budd Davisson recalls – the First Ride

Everyone has to start somewhere The trainer theme of this issue reverberates with me personally, so I hope you won’t mind if I climb out from behind my editor’s desk and talk like the pilot I am and always have been. When looking at some of the trainer images, I couldn’t help but reflect on […]