Imagine buying an airline ticket and being shown not to a seat in the fuselage, but into the wing itself — a little cabin built into the leading edge, with a big curved window giving you the pilot’s own view of the world rushing toward you. That was the...
On 17 May 1935, the man who would later write The Little Prince climbed aboard the largest aircraft on Earth. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in Moscow reporting for a French newspaper, was the only foreigner allowed onto the Tupolev ANT-20 “Maxim Gorky” —...
It looked like a four-poster bed welded out of scaffolding, and it flew by balancing on a column of jet blast. When the Rolls-Royce Thrust Measuring Rig lurched into the air at Hucknall in 1954, it became the first jet-lift aircraft to fly anywhere in the world...
For decades Japan built warships bristling with missile cells and used them only to shoot things down. That just changed. On Jul. 29, 2026, the destroyer JS Chōkai fired a Tomahawk cruise missile into the Pacific — the first time a Japanese warship has ever...
France’s special forces are about to get a very different kind of helicopter. On Jul. 30, 2026, Airbus Helicopters announced the delivery of the first NH90 Caïman Standard 2 — a purpose-built special-operations version of France’s standard...
It is one of the least glamorous aircraft in the sky and one of the most useful: a boxy, high-wing twin that lands in under a thousand feet, seats nine, and turns up wearing airline colours, army camouflage and even spy fits. Now, for the first time in almost sixty...
For four months, one of Europe’s larger air forces was fighting a quiet air-defence campaign over the Arabian Peninsula — and almost nobody noticed. Since the second half of March 2026, Italy has kept Eurofighter Typhoons, an early-warning aircraft and a...
Singapore has a habit of buying the best fighter it can find, years before it strictly needs it — and doing so quietly. So when reports emerged on 30 July that the city-state has opened exploratory talks around the Global Combat Air Programme, the...
SAS Flight 751 lost both engines to ice seconds after takeoff in 1991. The crew crash-landed an MD-81 in a field and all 129 aboard survived.
Eddie Rickenbacker, America’s WWI Ace of Aces, survived 24 days adrift on a Pacific life raft in 1942 after his B-17 ditched.
TACA Flight 110 lost both engines to storm hail over New Orleans in 1988. How a one-eyed captain glided a 737 onto a grass levee with no injuries.
The Yakovlev Yak-38 Forger was the USSR’s only carrier jump jet: three engines, tiny range, and an auto-ejection seat. How it stacked up to the Harrier.
Operation Bodenplatte, 1 January 1945: the Luftwaffe’s secret dawn strike on Allied airfields that wrecked hundreds of planes but broke its own fighter arm.
Frank Luke, the Arizona Balloon Buster, downed 14 balloons and 4 aircraft in days, died at 21, and became the first US airman awarded the Medal of Honor.
The Grumman F8F Bearcat missed WWII combat but lives on as “Rare Bear,” the fastest piston-engined aircraft ever raced.
No Kum-Sok flew his MiG-15 to South Korea in 1953, handing the West its first flyable MiG and unknowingly winning a $100,000 reward.
The Arado Ar 234 Blitz outran every Allied fighter over Normandy and bombed Remagen — inside the world’s first operational jet bomber.