Aviation Eras
Periods of innovation in the history of aviation from early flight to the modern age
Amy Johnson's excellent adventure
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
Above and Beyond: My Enemy, My Friend
Dan Cherry and Hong My met in the skies over North Vietnam in 1972, then again 36 years later.
May 2009 |
By Dan Cherry
Legends of Vietnam: Shoulder to Shoulder
The Grumman A-6 was ugly, but it sure could cook.
May 2009 |
By Rafael Lima
The War Between the Wars
In the skies over Spain, pilots and airplanes rehearsed for World War II.
May 2009 |
By Carl Posey
Vietnam: Reconciliation II
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
Goodwill Mission
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
FAA relents, will make bird strike data public
Bowing to outside pressure, most recently from the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration has decided to make public its full database on airplane birdstrikes. The information will be online beginning Friday morning, although the database won't be fully searchable...
April 23, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Johns Hopkins tops aero research schools
What's the top aerospace engineering school in the country? Depends on how you measure it, of course, but if you're ranking on the basis of who spends the most on research and development (as the National Science Foundation does each year), then first place goes to Johns Hopkins University in Balti...
April 16, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Le Airbag de Moi
Zut! Don't look for it on the fashion runways of Paris just yet. Perhaps on the autoroute first. See, it's not always aviation stuff that grabs me. It's the occasional diversion. Such as the wearable airbag.I was perusing www.helite.com because this little French company outside Dijon, city of mout...
April 15, 2009 |
By Mike Klesius
Former Foe Welcomes New Friend
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
How is a volcano like a jet engine?
Answer: In the sound it makes when erupting. Or rather, the infrasound—the low-frequency rumble just below the range of human hearing.Robin Matoza, a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues used infrasound arrays to record eruptions at...
April 13, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
George Lucas to film Tuskegee Airmen story
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
Marine One
Meet J.T. Bachmann, the first USMC pilot to fly the Joint Strike Fighter.
April 09, 2009 |
By Michael Klesius
Spitfire Sees Wartime Service Again—A Bidding War
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
And the Top-Ranked Airline Is...
The 19th annual Airline Quality Rating has just been released by researchers at St. Louis University and Wichita State University, and the news is...pick your adjective: encouraging, surprising, suspect, generous, exaggerrated, overdue, no-way-this-can-be-true, whatever. This is because the report ...
April 07, 2009 |
By Mike Klesius
The Seven
In 1959, a group of military pilots became Astronaut Heroes overnight, and created an American icon that survives to this day.
April 07, 2009 |
By Matthew Hersch
Across the South Atlantic in 1922
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
Urban Legendinski
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
