Military

A U.S. Marine Corps F-35B completed its first shipboard vertical landing on Tuesday, touching down on the deck of the USS Wasp in the Atlantic during preliminary phases of ship suitability testing. The Joint Strike Fighter will continue shipboard testing during the next two weeks, striving to complete a planned 67 landings on the Wasp […]

DARPA has released video footage of the recent HTV-2 test flight, giving the public a glimpse, albeit a distant one, into the movements of the unmanned hypersonic aircraft shortly before it was lost in the Pacific Ocean. The video, shot with a handheld camera by a crewmember aboard a tracking vessel, shows the aircraft in […]

A rare all-female crew from the 908th Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron (EARS) recently completed an aerial refueling flight in a KC-10 Extender over southwest Asia. “It wasn’t about doing a ‘first,’ although this is rare,” said Lt. Jen Carter, KC-10 pilot in the 908th EARS. “We usually have no more than two females on any […]

(August 2011) Just after 11 o’clock on a chilly San Francisco morning, Jan. 18, 1911, a 24-year-old civilian demonstration pilot named Eugene Ely coaxed his 50 hp Curtiss pusher biplane into the sky, made a wide circle over San Francisco Bay and set down on the deck of the anchored U.S. Navy armored cruiser USS […]

The Commemorative Air Force (CAF) Red Tail Squadron introduced its Rise Above traveling exhibit at last week’s EAA AirVenture. For the next several months, the exhibit is set to travel around the country, visiting airshows, schools and youth organizations with the goal of inspiring children to reach for their goals – no matter how unobtainable […]

When I became a first lieutenant aircraft commander in the B-47 Strato-Jet, the most beautiful airplane ever built, I had many lessons to be learned. As to emergency situations, our instructors always advised us to maintain control of the airplane and then handle the emergency. I, however, had another type of control to learn. In […]

Having read about and studied the North American P-51 Mustang for as long as I can remember, how on earth could I have been surprised by anything when I had the opportunity to fly it? I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that most of those other writers were so used […]

Guess what? Not much of what has been written about the old fighter is true.

After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles forbade the defeated Germans to build any military aircraft. Nevertheless, perhaps because something forbidden — even a mere apple — becomes irresistibly desirable, Germany in the 1930s surpassed all other nations in aeronautical technology. Two of Germany’s most talented and ambitious designers were Willy Messerschmitt and Ernst […]

Hollywood has it all wrong. No one in the fighter jet business, and I mean no one, gets a cool callsign such as “Maverick,” “Iceman” or “Burner” for being the Holy Grail of aviation. Callsigns come about because a young pilot commits the cardinal sin of fighter aviation … looking ridiculous in front of peers. […]