Editors' Picks
Area 51: Origins
America’s once-secret air base had humble beginnings.
Need for Speed
Airplanes with a mission: Fly faster.
Beyond the Moon
It’s not a place, exactly. But it could be NASA’s next destination.
The Invention of Flight
Inventors, dreamers, daredevils, charlatans: Aviation's early years had them all.
Vietnam Memoir
Stories from the war that shaped a generation.
Page 14 of 20
During World War II, WASPs proved that an airplane couldn’t tell the difference between a male and female pilot.
June 22, 2009
| By Jonna Dootlittle Hoppes
From the impossible dream of a space-based shield, missile defense has come down to Earth. But will it work?
May 2007
| By Ben Iannotta
Even 20 years later, this is an amazing piece of footage: Russian test pilot Anatoly Kvochur bailing out of his MiG-29, just 300 feet off the ground, at the 1989 Paris Air Show. I actually saw this happen—or rather, I was standing talking to a friend when we saw a cloud of black smoke and people r...
June 08, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
Grumman has built some venerable seaplanes—think Goose, Albatross, Mallard, and Widgeon—but it ran aground when it put a portly F4F-3 Wildcat on floats and called it an F4F-3S seaplane fighter (a classic oxymoron). The only redeeming feature of the F4F-3S was its nickname: Wildcatfish.
In 1942, th...
June 05, 2009
| By Pat Trenner
A bit of Memorial Day perspective from Mark Wells, a historian at the U.S. Air Force Academy, from his excellent 1995 book Courage and Air Warfare: The Allied Aircrew Experience in the Second World War:
However dramatic or tragic, statistics alone cannot possibly tell the whole story of the Allied ...
May 22, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
On this day in 1975, the last Americans were airlifted from Saigon, bringing an end to the war in Vietnam. Fred Reed, who was a news reporter at the time, was "determined to stay until the end." His account of being evacuated in the middle of the night in a darkened C-130 appeared in our June 1992 ...
April 30, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
In April 1975, escaping Saigon meant crowding into a darkened C-130 in the middle of the night.
July 1992
| By Fred Reed
To residents of Florida’s Gulf Coast, the Joint Strike Fighter says “Won’t you be my neighbor?”
April 24, 2009
| By Richard P. Hallion
After much lobbying and posturing on both sides, there appears to be a decision: The Air Force will cap production of the F-22 fighter at 187 airplanes, according to an op-ed by Air Force secretary Michael Donley and chief of staff Gen. Norton Schwartz (link requires registration) in yesterday's Wa...
April 14, 2009
| By Tony Reichhardt
Meet J.T. Bachmann, the first USMC pilot to fly the Joint Strike Fighter.
April 09, 2009
| By Michael Klesius
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
The Grumman A-6 was ugly, but it sure could cook.
May 2009
| By Rafael Lima
The paintings of Tom Lea, Life magazine's artist-correspondent during World War II.
February 06, 2009
| By Rebecca Maksel
How the Republic F-105 got good at a mission it was not designed to fly.
March 2009
| By Carl Posey
It's an addiction. Admitting you have it is the first step.
December 03, 2008
| By Rebecca Maksel
How a fighter-bomber-recon-attack superstar ended up as fodder for
target practice.
January 2009
| By Ralph Wetterhahn
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