US Military Aviation
Hang Time
Designers of spy planes have come up with any number of ways to increase dwell time over a target, from long-lasting UAVs to slow-moving airships to this hydrogen-powered craft called Phantom Eye, which was unveiled last week by Boeing Phantom Works.According to Boeing, Phantom Eye will be shipped ...
July 19, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Truck Killer
For one mission in Vietnam, the best aircraft for the job was a bomber from World War II.
July 2010 |
By David Lande
The Last Gunslinger
The F-15C is the only dedicated dogfighter left in the U.S. military fleet. Why isn't the Air Force replacing it?
July 2010 |
By Michael Behar
Sixty Years After Korea
The Korean War often gets lost in the commemorative gap between World War II and Vietnam, but it was the first major conflict of the Jet Age, and has plenty of lore of its own. The war began 60 years ago this month, when North Korean forces crossed the 38th Parallel to invade South Korea.
Here's a...
June 29, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
The World War II History of the Wright Military Flyer
The two-seat biplane looks somewhat flimsy. Sure, it was cutting-edge in 1909 when the Wrights demonstrated it for the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Fort Meyer. But how would it fare during World War II?Fortunately, the Wright Military Flyer never had to compete in any dogfights. But it did travel from...
June 14, 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Stupid Pilot Tricks 2.0
Several people received minor injuries when the powerful rotors of a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey, landing at a Staten Island park during a Memorial Day aerial demonstration, created mini-tornadoes of dirt, brush, and debris. Air & Space hereby bestows upon the crew the 2010 Stupid Pilot Award, fir...
June 02, 2010 |
By Pat Trenner
The Battle of Britain Beacon
To mark this year's 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the Royal Air Force Museum has begun initial planning for a new exhibition building, tentatively called the Battle of Britain Beacon.The 350-foot-tall structure (taller than Big Ben, the Statue of Liberty, and the United States Capitol...
June 01, 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Uniform Justice
Ah, uniforms. People either love 'em or hate 'em. One could argue that the U.S. military has a good number of attractive uniforms: think of the Marine Corps dress uniform, the blue Army service uniform, the Navy's full dress whites, and the Air Force flightsuit.But it seems that our illustrious mil...
May 25, 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
A&S Interview: Ray Puffer
The former Air Force historian asks, "Can anyone dispute that I had the most interesting job in the entire Air Force?"
May 2010 |
By Perry Turner
The Aerodynamic Properties of the Humvee
What springs to mind when thinking of the Humvee? Its sleek, aerodynamic lines? Well, no. But that didn't stop DARPA from announcing (in a 58-page proposal) its plans for combining an SUV-type ground vehicle with Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) capabilities. In other words, a flying Humvee.DAR...
May 04, 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Stealth: Flying Invisible
In March 1999, during the Kosovo War, as Lieutenant Colonel Dale Zelko piloted his F-117, he saw two missiles punch through the bottom of the clouds. The unbelievable had happened: A Serbian surface-to-air missile had locked on to his aircraft. Zelko was able to eject, and was rescued shortly after...
April 19, 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Not Your Average Seagull
On April 13, Bonhams auction house will offer a 1917 Curtiss MF "Seagull" Flying Boat for sale. The MF (which stands for "Modernised F-boat") was developed in 1917 from the original F model, a design the U.S. Navy had been using since 1912/1913. (The F model was the most successful of the pre-war C...
April 09, 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
F-35 Sticks the (Vertical) Landing
Lockheed Martin's F-35B Lightning II fighter hit another mark in its test program on March 18: the first vertical landing. Pilot Graham Tomlinson gently descended from a height of 150 feet after hovering for a minute above the runway at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. Watch for yourse...
March 23, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
![<b><i>Writer and photographer Ed Darack</b></i> spent time in December 2009 with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 261 (VMM-261) in southern Afghanistan. In addition to Darack’s story, “Osprey at War,” featured in our April / May issue, we offer a slideshow of images taking during his stay.
<br><br>“The pilots put the tip lights on for safety during nighttime and at dawn and dusk,” says Darack. “They just started this one up—you can see the plume of white smoke.”
<br><br>Many of the Osprey pilots used to fly the Boeing CH-46 Sea Knight, known colloquially to the Marines as the “Phrog.” “Basically, coming from the CH-46, I felt safe in the Phrog because it had two .50-caliber machine guns,” says Captain Chris Meixell of VMM-261, “but with this airframe, we have triple-redundant flight controls, and those controls are routed in different parts of the airframe. The engines are 46 feet apart, which decreases the chances of both of them getting shot out by enemy fire, and [the MV-22] can climb to 9,000 feet in airplane mode on one engine. The fuel system is a suction type system, and if you take a round, it is just going to suck air, it is not going to spray fuel. The greatest safety advantage is the performance of the aircraft itself, which allows us to climb quickly out of small-arms and shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile range.”](http://media.airspacemag.com/images/200*133/Osprey--4.jpg)
A Tiltrotor Squadron in Afghanistan
Scenes of a Marine unit flying the incredible, versatile Osprey.
March 15, 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
"Sorry, Goose, It's Time to Buzz the Tower"
The 31 members of Class 136, U.S. Navy Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Maryland, which graduated last December, pitched in on a deluxe jet plane kiddie ride, wearing Test Pilot School livery and signed by each student. Says Damon Carson of Kiddie Rides USA, "The commanding officer and other st...
March 11, 2010 |
By Pat Trenner
