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Toss Grenades From an Open Cockpit? In 1911, an American Soldier Had a Better...
On November 1, 1911, Italian Sub-Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti leaned over the edge of the cockpit of his Etrich Taube monoplane.Below him he could see a camp in the Libyan desert that was occupied by...
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Was World War II Ace ‘Butch’ O’Hare Killed by Friendly Fire?
.image-13778650 { max-height: 100%; --left: 51.27%; --top: 31.58%; } Navy Lieutenant junior grade Edward H. “Butch” O’Hare first experienced the often deadly phenomenon known as “friendly fire” right...
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The MiG-25 Terrified the West Until a Defector Exposed Its True Nature
.image-13781915 { max-height: 100%; --left: 50.44%; --top: 72.25%; } The spy satellite photos created panic in the Pentagon. They showed an enormous Soviet airplane, probably an interceptor, with...
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Before Creating ‘King Kong,’ He Fought the Soviets from the Air
.image-13782026 { max-height: 100%; --left: 34.32%; --top: 41.12%; } King Kong has thrilled movie audiences ever since its premiere in 1933, but few people know that the man behind the movie had a...
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Before CGI, This Director Needed to Build His Own B-25 Fleet
.image-13782049 { max-height: 100%; --left: 50.00%; --top: 19.34%; } For his third film, acclaimed director Mike Nichols decided to adapt “Catch-22,” Joseph Heller’s pitch-black satire of war,...
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The Red Baron’s Most Famous Kill: Duel of Aces Over the Somme
On November 23, 1916, a pivotal struggle unfolded above the Somme between one of the most accomplished fighter pilots in Britain’s Royal Flying Corps and a relatively unknown German aviator. When it...
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How White House Interference And Enemy Intelligence Cost American Airmen...
.image-13783530 { max-height: 100%; --left: 50.00%; --top: 42.61%; } On July 24, 1965, four McDonnell F-4C Phantom fighter-bombers of Leopard Flight joined an airstrike against the Dien Bien Phu...
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When American Planes Fought American Planes in World War II
Eighty years ago, on November 8, 1942, the Allies launched Operation Torch, the amphibious invasion of French North Africa and the first major U.S. foray into World War II’s European theater. An...
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This Panther Pilot’s Combat Mission Was So Secret He Couldn’t Talk About it...
.image-13786313 { max-height: 100%; --left: 57.10%; --top: 19.13%; } Driving winds blew blinding snow across the deck of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Oriskany on November 18, 1952. Inside the...
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Meet America’s Highest Scoring Living Fighter Ace
.image-13789670 { max-height: 100%; --left: 50.03%; --top: 37.62%; } The 357th Fighter Group was the first in the U.S. Eighth Air Force to enter combat from the outset of World War II equipped with...
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What made the Hellcat Such an Effective Zero Buster?
.image-13789425 { max-height: 100%; --left: 54.03%; --top: 42.59%; } During the initial years of the Pacific War, Japan’s A6M Zero ruled the skies. America’s carrier-based air fleet couldn’t match the...
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This Polish Monoplane Wasn’t as Bad as You Might Think
.image-13789506 { max-height: 100%; --left: 32.99%; --top: 66.57%; } For a brief window in the 1930s, Poland’s PZL P.11 monoplane was considered the most advanced fighter in the world. As World War...
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Army and Navy Pilots Joined Together in a Day of Duels Over Vietnam
.image-13790329 { max-height: 100%; --left: 18.06%; --top: 70.06%; } Among other responses to North Vietnam’s invasion of South Vietnam on March 30, 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon announced on May...
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These Aircraft Have Saved Men on the Ground
.image-13789848 { max-height: 100%; --left: 50.06%; --top: 46.51%; } From 1794, when French balloonists dropped messages from the basket of l’Entreprenant to report on Austrian troop movements to the...
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Was the Spitfire the Best-Looking Airplane of World War II?
.image-13789479 { max-height: 100%; --left: 74.97%; --top: 32.96%; } Celebrated for its role alongside the Hawker Hurricane in defending British skies in 1940, the agile Spitfire soon took on an...
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Given the Choice Between Jail or the Military, Snuffy Smith Chose the Latter...
.image-13791817 { max-height: 100%; --left: 47.89%; --top: 16.74%; } Sergeant Maynard Harrison “Snuffy” Smith was not your typical hero. “From the time he entered the Air Force he had been in some...
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Meet the Soviet Pilot Who Lost Both His Legs But Continued to Fly
.image-13790603 { max-height: 100%; --left: 32.99%; --top: 35.71%; } As early as World War I, airmen who lost limbs in combat refused to let that keep them out of the air. In the Imperial Russian...
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This Plane Made all the Difference in Vietnam — So Did its Aviators
.image-13792286 { max-height: 100%; --left: 50.09%; --top: 45.22%; } A Cessna O-2’s night reconnaissance mission turned tragic on Christmas Day, 1967. Near the Demilitarized Zone, Maj. Jerry Sellers...
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The Time Ecuador and Peru Fought a 34-Day War Over a Patch of Amazonian Jungle
.image-13791895 { max-height: 100%; --left: 49.98%; --top: 58.13%; } There it was again. He was sure of it now. Muffled by the dense Amazonian undergrowth came the low rumbling of a vehicle moving at...
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Does Britain’s WWI B.E.2c Deserve its Bad Rep?
.image-13793305 { max-height: 100%; --left: 47.10%; --top: 59.02%; } For more than a century the Royal Aircraft Factory’s B.E.2c has been denigrated as one of the worst aircraft ever made. Even during...
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