The F4F Wildcat First flown in February 1939, the rugged and heavily armed F4F Wildcat became the Navy/Marine Corps premier fighter until late 1942. By the end of that year,…
The RAF Lightning The Lightning was the first fully supersonic aircraft in the Royal Air Force, and Fighter Command’s maximum speeds were instantly doubled with its introduction. Throughout its twenty-eight…
The SR-71 Blackbird The SR-71, the most sophisticated spy plane in the Blackbird family, which also included the A-12 and YF-12, was created by a team of Lockheed personnel under…
The UH-1 Huey The UH-1 “Iroquois” helicopter, also known as the “Huey” for the phonetic sound of its original designation, HU-1, served as the Army’s workhorse throughout the Vietnam War.…
The KC-135 Stratotanker The KC-135 Stratotanker was the first offspring of the Dash 80. It was the only tanker employed by the Strategic Air Command for fifteen years, and it…
The A-12 Oxcart at Area 51 Area 51, a top-secret military installation hidden in the desert northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, has been the testing ground for the United States’…
The Boeing X-32 Boeing was given a four-year contract by the US Department of Defense in 1996 for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program competition’s concept demonstration phase. The intention…
The Barricade landing Navy carrier operations are a furious ballet that flogs the senses, even in the calmest circumstances. This is taken a step further when the choice is made…
The Vigilante The North American A3J Vigilante was once intended to be a Mach 2 all-weather bomber with nuclear weapons capability. However, as nuclear submarines took over the Navy’s strategic…
A lonely US Navy A-7 intercepts a formation of Soviet Tu-16 Badger bombers The Tupolev Tu-16, also known by the NATO reporting name Badger, was an innovative project that was…