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IN 1927 A PINEAPPLE MAGNATE SPONSORED AN AIR RACE TO HAWAII. IT DID NOT GO WELL It is said that the first automobile race took place the moment the second [...]

The Boeing 247 was the end result of a battle between company management and its engineers. Unfortunately, the engineers lost. Although enshrined today as 'the first modern airliner'--and it certainly [...]

You probably use one of William P. Lear's inventions every day. No, not a Learjet-unless you're richer than we reckon--but the practical, affordable, compact car radio. It all started with [...]

THE MIG-25 SEEMED TO SPELL TROUBLE FOR THE WEST. THEN A DEFECTOR EXPOSED THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS SOVIET BEAST The spy satellite photos created panic in the Pentagon. They [...]

IN 1943 IT TOOK JUST 143 DAYS FOR LOCKHEED DESIGNER CLARANCE 'KELLY' JOHNSON AND HIS ELITE TEAM OF 128 SKUNK WORKS ENGINEERS AND FABRICATORS TO CREATE THE P-80 SHOOTING STAR. [...]

AS A CHILD OF THE PROPELLER AGE AND A PILOT WHO FOR 40 YEARS FLEW AIRPLANES WITH PROPS, FOR ME THE MARK OF MUSCLE IS NOT A TAILPIPE TWINKLING LIKE [...]

LIKE THE BARRAGE BALLOON AND THE ASSAULT GLIDER, THE TORPEDO BOMBER IS A WEAPON WE WILL NEVER SEE AGAIN. Its fate had been sealed nearly four decades earlier, but the [...]

THE SOVIET'S HAVE TRADITIONALLY HELD PRIMACY AS AVIATION'S GIGANTISM SPECIALISTS. Igor Sikorsky's Ilya Muromets, a vast stork of an airplane famously photographed with two crewmen strolling atop its fuselage, first [...]

NAME THE MOST EFFECTIVE AMERICAN BOMBERS OF WORLD WAR II AND YOU'LL CERTAINLY COME UP WITH THE B-17, B-24 AND B-29, MAYBE THE TWIN-ENGINE B-25, BUT HOW MANY WILL THINK [...]

U.S. NAVY AIRCREWS AND RECRUITERS LOVED THE GRUMMAN F-14 TOMCAT, BUT A CAREFUL REVIEW OF ITS RECORD SUGGESTS THE TOP GUN MOUNT WASN'T ALL IT WAS CRANKED UP TO BE [...]

REPUBLIC'S P-47 WASN'T A SEXY OR GROUNDBREAKING FIGHTER BUT IT POSSESSED ONE ESSENTIAL QUALITY PRIZED BY PILOTS: IT GOT THE JOB DONE AND RETURNED THEM SAFELY HOME WORLD WAR II [...]

THE NORTH AMERICAN B-25 MITCHELL LUAS PRESET FOR THE OVERTURE OF THE PACIFIC WAR AND WAS STILL ONSTAGE RS THE CURTAIN FELL ON THE FINAL ACT. On April 18, 1942, [...]

Unless an aircraft design is irredeemably bad, even the worst of them get corrected, and their fatal flaws become just a bad memory. Which is why the following selection of [...]

PILOTS LOVED THE THUD. EXCEPT FOR TEST PILOTS, WHO WERE PAID TO FIND FAULTS, THE REPUBLIC F-105 THUNDERCHIEF SEEMS TO HAVE HAD NO DETRACTORS. Aviators as well as ground crews [...]

WINGS OF WAR The World War II Fighter Plane that Saved the Allies and the Believers Who Made It Fly by David Fairbank White and Margaret Stanback White, Dutton Caliber, [...]

THE MESSERSCHMITT ME-110 'DESTROYER' WAS SHOT DOWN IN DROVES DURING THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN, BUT IT WENT ON TO BECOME WORLD WAR II'S MOST SUCCESSFUL NIGHT FIGHTER Gloster Gladiator biplanes [...]

LINDBERGH, EARHART, DOOLITTLE, RICKENBACKER, ROSCOE TURNER, WILEY POST, BERNT BALCHEN, HAROLD GATTY, PAUL MANTZ ... THE DEAN'S LIST OF 1920S AND '30S PILOTS GOES ON, BUT RARELY WILL YOU FIND [...]

WHILE THE UNITED STATES WAS CRANKING OUT CENTURY SERIES FIGHTERS, AL SPECTACULAR BUT NONE PARTICULARLY EFFECTIVE IN THE ROLE FOR WHICH THEY WERE INTENDED, THE SOVIET UNION QUIETLY CAME UP [...]

WERE IT NOT FOR A 32-YEAR-OLD U.S. AIR FORCE COLONEL WHO HAPPENED TO BE AN MIT-DEGREED ENGINEER, THE B-52 STRATOFORTRESS WOULD HAVE BEEN A TUPOLEV TU-95 BEAR LOOKALIKE--A A BIG, [...]

WE CALLED HER BETTY. THE RRTERICAN SYSTEM OF NICKNAMING WORLD WAR II JAPANESE AIRCRAFT GAVE FEMALE NAMES TO BOBERS, MALE NAMES TO FIGHTERS. Betty was actually a waitress in Pennsylvania. [...]

As of late March 2023, the Dakota Territory Air Museum, in Minot, North Dakota, is preparing for the first flight of its impeccably restored Republic P-47D-23 Thunderbolt. It is encouraging [...]

'It' is the Lockheed P2V Neptune patrol bomber, and that opinion comes from Russell Strine, who flies the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's fully restored P2V-7 (which is currently inactive, since airshows [...]

It was a catalogue of aircraft encapsulating several nations' worst aeronautical excesses, in a manner that today might be considered politically incorrect. The Italian fighter was double-ended so it could [...]

THE WORLD'S FIRST PRACTICAL FIREBOMBER WAS A STE ARM AN, A1939 BOEING 75 THAT HAD BEEN CONVERTED INTO A CROPDUSTER. In 1955 a California agriculture applicator, Willows Flying Service, cut [...]

AVIATION HAS GIVEN US MANY HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW MOMENTS--PASSENGER-CARRYING DIRIGIBLES, MAILPLANES, MILITARY GLIDERS, ENORMOUS FLYING BOATS--AND AMONG THEM IS THE CRAFT OF SKYWRITING. Just as there are diehard airship [...]

Generations of Blue Angels and Thunderbirds owe their ability to stroll airshow ramps in smart, sexy flight suits to a wealthy, irascible Australian World War I pilot named Sidney Cotton. [...]

Some restorers confronted with a warbird modified to fill a civilian mission--borate bomber, bizplane, Reno racer--will reverse the mods and return the airplane to its original condition. The German company [...]

At half past noon on July 21, 1948, a Boeing B-29 descended onto the surface of Lake Mead, the Nevada reservoir behind Hoover Dam. In a gentle descent at just [...]

THE WORLD'S LARGEST AEROSPACE COMPANY GREW FROM A SINGLE SIMPLE, ANGULAR, TWIN-FLOAT SEAPLANE: THE 1916 B&W MODEL 1. MODEST BEGINNINGS William Boeing (right) and pilot Eddie Hubbard stand before the [...]

THE BEECH STAGGERWING IS JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY'S IDEA OF THE ULTIMATE 1930S LUXURY PRIVATE AIRCRAFT. There isn't a 10-most-beautiful-airplanes list published that doesn't include the Staggerwing, and every classic airplanes [...]

BEHOLD THE LOCKHEED U-2, AS PERFECT AN AIRPLANE AS HAS EVER FLOWN. A hastily designed stopgap intended to fly for two or perhaps four years at most, its fragility and [...]

REIMAR HORTEN AND HIS OLDER BROTHER WALTER WERE GERMAN AIRCRAFT HOMEBUILDERS. Their relatively short aircraft-building careers extended from 1933 until the end of World War II, though they did some [...]

Mike Fithian approached his re-creation of a 1912 Etrich Taube with compulsive workmanship and attention to detail. That's because he wanted to build a faithful representation of the airplane his [...]

A mashup replication of one of World War II's more unusual combat aircraft, a Focke-Wulf Fw-200 Condor, is underway in Germany. The completed airframe, engines and partial cockpit are on [...]

On August 2, 1943, CBS war correspondent Eric Sevareid and a small group of American diplomats and Chinese army officers climbed aboard a Curtiss C-46 Commando transport plane at a [...]

THERE WERE MANY NIGHT FIGHTERS IN WORLD WAR II, BUT ONLY TWO WERE DESIGNED FROM THE GROUND UP TO PLAY IN THE DARK: THE NORTHROP P-61 BLACK WIDOW AND THE [...]

Eccentric solo inventor J. Walter Christie designed vehicles--from race cars and taxis to fire engines and self-propelled artillery--like no others. But his oddball designs influenced some of the 20th century's [...]

THEY CALLED IT THE CURTISS CALAMITY, OL' DUMBO, THE FLYING WHALE AND, MORE RECENTLY, MISS PIGGY. The C-46 Commando was the biggest twin-engine airplane in the world when it first [...]

Had the Harrier's ability to take off and land vertically been truly meaningful, important and uncompromising, every military aircraft manufacturer in the world would be building Harrier-style jump jets. Only [...]

AIRCRAFT QUICKLY BECAME WEAPONS OW WAR, BUT LESS EXPECTED WAS THEIR ROLE AS RESCUERS. Today it seems inevitable that aircraft--particularly helicopters--should be used as angels of mercy, to pluck the [...]

The Arado Ar-234, the world's first jet bomber, too often slips under the casual enthusiast radar. Perhaps because on the ground, with its landing gear down--which is how wartime photographs [...]

The New England Air Museum has restored an airplane that represents a fascinating but pointless path in American aviation I history. The one-of-a-kind 1947 CBY-3 Loadmaster I was Vincent Burnelli's [...]

Not counting bombers, transports and more specialized types, the United States produced just over 100,000 fighter aircraft of 11 different types for use in World War II. Only 674 of […]

The red carpet for great aircraft designers has been trod by names that may not be household fare but certainly are known in every hangar. Kelly Johnson, Ed Heinemann, Jack [...]

The morning of Feb. 19, 1942, dawned hot and humid in Australia's Northern Territory. Some 50 miles north across Beagle Gulf from Darwin--the region's sparsely populated seaside capital--Roman Catholic Father [...]

Of the hundreds of types of aircraft that flew in World War II, every warbirder could come up with a list of the dozen most iconic. Spitfire, P-51, Zero, Stuka, [...]

Mike Hua's airplane was leaving a silvery streak of vaporized jet fuel in its wake, as its tanks slowly drained through a fractured fuel line. The thin trail was barely [...]

In the early 1960s I was an editor at the travel magazine Holiday. As a geeky young aviation enthusiast, I was assigned all the dog-and-pony shows that had anything to [...]

A Douglas A-26 Invader that spent a year and a half flying for the French in Indochina during 1952 and '53 has hit the air again, making its first flight [...]

Conceived by the Air Force as an alternative to an expensive Army attack helicopter, the A-10 Warthog has since survived repeated attempts to put it out to pasture. Now its [...]