Category Archives: Video

When the Lockheed S-3 Viking first fired up its engines on carrier decks in the mid-1970s, something seemed very wrong. Instead of the thunderous roar expected from a military jet, this submarine hunter produced a sound more familiar from suburban living rooms – the distinctive whine of a vacuum cleaner. Continue reading →

November 10, 1943, Rechlin test facility. Hauptmann Hans-Werner Lerche climbed into the cockpit of a captured P-47 Thunderbolt nicknamed “Beetle.” Intelligence briefings had told him American fighters were crude, mass-produced machines built by a nation better at making refrigerators than aircraft. Continue reading →

Flak bloomed around him. Tracers lanced past like electric needles. Captain Robin Olds didn’t flinch; he was already lining up his next target. Scat II, his silver P-38 Lightning, screamed across the sky, twin engines snarling as it tore through Messerschmitts. Then, he saw movement below. A lone Mustang, twisting hard, two Bf 109s welded to its tail. No time to think. Olds flipped Scat II over and dropped like a sword from the clouds. Engines howled. Guns ready. But his controls were not working. Continue reading →

June 27, 1950. Seoul has fallen. At Suwon Airfield, American civilians are trapped as North Korean fighters strafe the runway, destroying transports one by one. Enemy armor is twenty miles away and closing. North Korean radar picks up five unidentified contacts approaching from the sea. Continue reading →

British Flight Sergeant James “Ginger” Lacey stared in horror from his Hawker Hurricane. A German Heinkel He 111 had just bombed Buckingham Palace—smoke still coiling into the sky. Continue reading →

The Northrop P-61 Black Widow is a twin-engine United States Army Air Forces fighter aircraft of World War II. It was the first operational U.S. warplane designed specifically as a night fighter. Continue reading →

The Thunderscreech was an experimental American turboprop plane created to as an experimental variant of the the F-84 Thunderstreak fighter jet. Development began after the Navy issued a requirement seeking a carrier fighter that could take off without a catapult – a problem still facing jet powered aircraft at the time. Even though the Navy would cancel its order, the US Air Force would absorb the project for testing. Continue reading →

Republic began with the F-84 as a straight-wing monoplane on tricycle undercarriage with a jet engine in response to a General Operational Requirement in the final year of WW2. While a straight-wing model was eventually produced for frontline service in the Korean War, it was outclassed by the MiG-15’s it faced. What seemed like a simple idea, change to a swept-wing design, that development proved more extensive than expected. Continue reading →