“I start the aggressive [6.5-G] pull into the vertical—and the aircraft explodes… Any F-100 pilot who hears a loud ‘BANG!’ automatically thinks, ‘compressor stall,’” Merrill A. “Tony” McPeak F-100 Thunderbird…
‘For all the bad-mouthing the F-104 has received in the past if I had the money (and my wife would let me… which she definitely would not!) I would buy…
‘It may very well be the biggest procurement blunder in the history of the Air Force, the Army Air Force, the Army Air Corps, and even the Balloon Division of…
‘My RSO had given him “the bird” with his middle finger: I lit the afterburners and left that Mirage standing still. Two minutes later, we were crossing the Channel,’ Lt.…
‘We started an ACM engagement and as soon as I got a little G on the airplane, that [radar dome] failed…’ Joe Edwards, VF-142 F-14 Tomcat Pilot Established on August…
The SR-71’s engineering was so advanced that new tools had to be created in order to build the Blackbird The SR-71 Blackbird collected intelligence in some of the world’s most…
Erich Hartmann would only have barely a second to get out of the way before colliding with the enemy Erich Hartmann, a German fighter pilot during World War II and…
‘The small chance we had against an F-15 Eagle was gone against the F-16 Viper. Not even putting down the landing gear and letting him fly by us worked!!!’ Jim…
‘I had a catastrophic turbine failure that buzz sawed the back end of my plane and turned the plane into a fireball. I was going about 500 knots indicated. I…
‘I watched in amazement as the Vc circle [on the radar display], which told us the relative closing velocity of the target, started rapidly winding up far higher than I…