When World War II entered the jet age, Britain answered Hitler’s V-1 flying bomb campaign with a revolutionary aircraft unlike anything that had ever entered combat: the Gloster Meteor. Continue reading
Category Archives: Video
The Crew That Vanished: Doolittle’s Most Mysterious Aircraft – North American B-25 Mitchell
The Doolittle Raid is remembered as America’s first strike against Japan after Pearl Harbor, but one of its sixteen bombers followed a path unlike any of the others. Plane #8, commanded by Captain Edward York, never reached the Chinese airfields that were supposed to receive the raiders after the attack. Continue reading
North American F-107 – The Mach 2 Man-Eater that Never Got its War
The F-107 Ultra Sabre should have become one of America’s greatest Cold War fighters. Faster than Mach 2, armed for nuclear strike missions, and packed with cutting-edge technology, it was the radical successor to the legendary F-100 Super Sabre. Continue reading
Arado Ar 234 – Germany’s Most Dangerous Jet Aircraft
In 1944, Allied soldiers in Normandy looked up and saw something they could barely believe: a German jet aircraft screaming overhead at nearly 460 miles per hour, too fast for radar to track properly, too fast for anti-aircraft guns to follow, and too fast for most fighters to catch in time. This was the Arado Ar 234 — the world’s first operational jet-powered reconnaissance aircraft, and later, the first jet bomber to see combat. Continue reading
Convair F-106 Delta Dart – the Most Incredible Interceptor Ever
An American interceptor just landed itself in the middle of a frozen field. In February 1970, an F-106 Delta Dart entered an uncontrollable spin high above Montana during a mock dogfight. Continue reading
Fairchild C-123 Provider – the Most Dangerous Plane America Ever Flew
The Fairchild C-123 Provider survived almost every role the Cold War could throw at it. Originally designed as a giant military glider in the late 1940s, the aircraft evolved into a rugged transport capable of landing on rough jungle strips, carrying troops into isolated bases, and flying missions other aircraft avoided. Continue reading
de Havilland Vampire – the Wrong Little 500mph Jet Fighter
By the time the de Havilland Vampire finally took to the skies in 1945, Nazi Germany was collapsing, and the jet would never fire a shot in the conflict it was designed for. But what came next changed everything. Continue reading
North American Rockwell OV-10 Bronco – the Weird Slow Little Plane America Used When Wars Got Nasty
It looked outdated almost the moment it was created. In the early 1960s, as the Pentagon obsessed over supersonic jets and nuclear warfare, two frustrated Marine Corps officers believed the military was building the wrong aircraft for the wars soldiers were actually fighting. They wanted something slower, simpler, and capable of staying close to troops on the ground for hours at a time. Continue reading