Ever wondered which plane was shot down the most by the Luftwaffe in World War II? How about the other 19 most shot-down Allied planes? According to some sources, the Luftwaffe claimed just shy of 68,000 Allied aircraft were destroyed. Although this list is by no means perfect, it gives you a good idea of […] More
On June 19, 1944, when the First Battle of the Philippine Sea was raging on, Lieutenant Alex Vraciu aboard his Grumman F6F Hellcat, spotted a formation of Japanese dive bombers bound for a carrier. He intercepted three hostile formations at full speed, tearing them with his six .50-caliber machine guns, and one by one, they […] More
In 1940, Robert Jean Marie de La Rochefoucauld fed France to escape the Gestapo forces. He would then come back three years later, becoming a lethal French resistance operative trained by the British to do sabotage and reconnaissance missions on enemy territory, and would become the greatest French saboteur. Escaping France After France fell in […] More
The sudden leap in aviation technology during World War I and the onset of World War II led the Royal Air Force (RAF) to believe that any future conflict could be won by air supremacy alone. On December 1939, 22 Vickers Wellington bombers were sent to the sheltered German area in the North Sea. Allied […] More
The Brewster Buffalo is known to be one of the worst, if not the worst aircraft used in World War II. While the Buffalo had its drawbacks, it was also the victim of poor timing, company mismanagement, and the air staff’s obsession to put as many extras into it. Origins The Buffalo’s origins can be […] More
During World War II, 98-year-old Dick Miralles served as a gunner on the SBD Dauntless Dive Bomber in the Pacific Theater. He’s the last surviving member of Air Group 11 and still has his logbook up to this day. He also gets to be a tail gunner again in his SBD Dauntless for the first […] More
With advanced new fighters being introduced, it seems clear that the US is moving further away from dogfighting platforms, doubling down on beyond-visual range engagements. But for many, it feels like Déjà vu. After all, didn’t the Americans already learn this lesson in Vietnam? A Thing of the Past America prizes air superiority in its […] More
The Dornier 335 was a heavy fighter built for Germany during the Second World War. Today, we’ll be exploring the story of the quickest aircraft the Nazis have ever built: Origins Claude Dornier was a German aircraft designer and engineer known for his unusual taste in aircraft designs. While he gained fame with his more […] More
The Handley Page Hampden was a British twin-engine bomber that served the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. It was also known as the “Flying Suitcase,” because of its cramped crew conditions. Developing The Prototype The Handley Page team proposed a radical design placing emphasis on performance rather than payload- the HP 52. […] More
Proponents of the sixth-generation idea say that it’s really quite simple. What defines this new generation is its unconventional systems and its relationship with information. For many, the fact that the vast majority of systems being imagined and prototyped are very far distant from the traditional idea of a fighter aircraft means that we’re clearly […] More
The United States became the first nation to have a fifth-generation fighter in its war arsenal when the F-22 Raptor first made its maiden flight on September 1997. Unwilling to be outdone by the West, China soon unveiled its own fifth-generation warplane, the mightily impressive Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon. In fact, it was so impressive […] More
During the 1980s NASA built the High Angle-of-Attack Technology Program or HATP. It chose the F-18 Hornet to be used in the program. However, throughout the years, it was severely cannibalized for parts, so mangled that the Navy thought it will never fly again. Still, engineers remembered it as a legendary High Angle-of-Attack Research Vehicle, […] More
