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Page 18 of 30
The YB-49 demonstrated that putting jet engines on an airframe designed for piston engines made the aircraft faster but not better.

July 2009 | By General Robert L. Cardenas, U.S. Air Force (Ret.) As told to James P. Busha

Boeing B-47

A B-47 pilot remembers when an airplane—and Curtis LeMay—stiffened the spine of the Strategic Air Command
July 2009 | By Walter J. Boyne

Fear of Floating

Diagnosis: Collective Panic Attack. Cause: Count von Zeppelin.
July 2009 | By Dan Vergano

“Efforts to keep down our air power were begun as soon as the sound of the cannon had ceased on the Western Front in 1919,” said Mitchell (second from right).

Courtroom sketches from aviation's Trial of the Century.
July 2009 | By Rebecca Maksel

Crew members Russ Holmes, Jack Ruggles, William Vanderkloot, Ron Williams, and John Affleck (left to right) stealthily flew Churchill and other VIPs to crucial meetings around the globe.

A World War II flight engineer dishes on the most “I” of the VIPs he flew with.
July 2009 | By Graham Chandler

At a 2008 motorcar and aircraft show in West Sussex, England, The Six and its pilot, Julian Firth (in white flightsuit), greet dignitaries such as Norman Turnball (left), the aircraft’s flight engineer from 1959 to 1964.

If Lockheed’s Constellation was the hare, the Douglas DC-6 was the oh-so-reliable tortoise.
July 2009 | By Kara Platoni

Reading the stories of early aviators always makes me shake my head with admiration. Consider, for example, Amy Johnson, who on this day in 1930, set out from Croydon, England, bent on becoming the first woman to fly from England to Australia—which she did, in 19 days, alone in a de Havilland Gi...
May 05, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

The 1935 Explorer II mission was a daring ascent into the stratosphere by Captain Albert Stevens (second from left). Edward Dawson Cochley of Wabash, Indiana, sent this photo of his grandfather, great-grandmother, grandmother, and uncle, who was involved with the flight.

From the collections of Air & Space readers, personal moments in the history of flight.
November 2007 | By airspacemag.com

Might Dan Cherry have a third career as an ambassador to Vietnam? The retired Air Force Brigadier General met the Vietnamese pilot he shot down in 1972 about a year ago. When Cherry returned home, he set about arranging for Hong My to visit the U.S. The two made presentations at the Sun & Fun f...
April 27, 2009 | By Pat Trenner

 The "Above & Beyond" department in our April/May issue chronicles the search by a retired Air Force Brigadier General for the Vietnamese pilot he shot down in 1972. After an emotional reunion, Dan Cherry arranged for Hong My and his son to come to the United States, where the two pilots will p...
April 15, 2009 | By Pat Trenner

The director of Star Wars says he's been waiting 20 years to film the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the African-American pilots who distinguished themselves in the skies over Europe during World War II. Now he'll get the chance. George Lucas's company, Lucasfilm, will begin shooting in Europe this ...
April 09, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

On April 20, put in your bid for a 1944 two-seat, airworthy Supermarine Spitfire at a Bonhams auction at the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon, Britain. Bonhams officials expect a sale price of $2.2 million.
April 07, 2009 | By Pat Trenner

On this day in 1922, a pair of Portuguese aviators, Sacadura Cabral and Gago Coutinho, set off on the first flight across the southern Atlantic, from Lisbon to Recife, Brazil. They made it, but with plenty of down time for repairs and waiting on replacement aircraft. They finally finished the 5,100...
March 30, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

Photos of this Soviet behemoth, posing as a K-7 designed by Konstantin Kalinin, have been zinging around the Internet lately, eventually landing on the desktops of National Air and Space Museum curators. “If it’s on the Internet, it must be true,” goes the saying.No dice, says curator Von Hardesty,...
March 27, 2009 | By Pat Trenner

Cube life got you down? Download Voices of the Sky from Smithsonian Folkways and “tighten your safety belt, locate the nearest emergency exit, study the instructions for inflating your life jacket the courage—and the wattage—to turn up the sound to runway volume.”Besides offering terrific liner ...
March 24, 2009 | By Rebecca Maksel

Earl Wood, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic Aero Medical Unit who pioneered the study of G-forces on pilots in the early jet age, died on March 18 at the age of 97. The Mayo Clinic has a short sketch of his career and a documentary film in two parts.
March 24, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

This summer, the PBS History Detectives series will air an episode that investigates the provenance of a metal airplane part owned by a San Jose, California man. Jon Ott says his grandfather recovered the part from Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10E after she dragged a wing on the ground during ...
March 20, 2009 | By Pat Trenner

In 1916, eight Curtiss biplanes from the U.S. Army’s 1st Aero Squadron—the country’s entire air force—flew into Mexico for their first military action.
March 19, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

You don’t see much bipartisanship in Washington these days, but yesterday all 17 female members of the U.S. Senate, Democrats and Republicans alike, introduced a bill (S. 614) to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs. The medal, previously given to groups...
March 18, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

Introduced in 1935, the Heinkel He 111 bomber was one of the Condor Legion’s most potent weapons.

In the skies over Spain, pilots and airplanes rehearsed for World War II.
May 2009 | By Carl Posey

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