‘We had the specks lab tested, and they turned out to be organic material—insects that had been injected into the stratosphere,’ Norman Nelson CIA’s engineer inside the Skunk Works In…
US Navy Submarine Chief Petty Officer recalls when his boat was pinged by the sonar of a Spruance-class destroyer (the sonar ping sound could be heard through the hull of his submarine)
‘The Spruance-class destroyer sighted our periscope and decided to prosecute. We ran for a while, let them have some ASW training and then surfaced and went into port,’ James Clark,…
When a Phantom II pilot belly landed his stricken F-4D without his backseater
‘In retrospect, my ordering WSO to eject was a mistake which I have always regretted. I felt at the time I was saving his life and I intended to eject…
NASA X-59 QueSST aircraft moves Closer to Runway at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works facility for ground testing
The series of images in this article shows NASA’s X-59 as it sits on the flight line — the space between the hangar and the runway — at Lockheed Martin…
The high loss rate of the F-105 over Vietnam can be attributed, according to the F-105 pilot, to the SAC bomber philosophy
‘At Takhli we liked the pop-up tactic as we felt we got better target coverage with less exposure and fewer losses. Lots of folks agreed until new PACAF C-in-C Gen…
Mossad female agents faked being Iraqi MiG-21 pilots’ girlfriends and murdered all of them
Mossad deployed a team of female agents to recruit several Iraqi pilots who had been sent to Randolph Air Force Base in the United States for a staff course, but…
JP-7 was not the only fuel that the SR-71 could use in an emergency; JP-4 and JP-5 also limited the Blackbird’s top speed to Mach 1.5
The first aircraft to use its own fuel for hydraulic fluid was the SR-71 Blackbird and it was called the fuel hydraulic system The legendary SR-71 Blackbird Mach 3+ spy…
Video shows last flying C-123 Provider almost crashing while landing in heavy Crosswinds at Geneseo Airshow
Filmed on Jun. 3, 2023 the video in this post features the last flying C-123 Provider (Serial #54-664, named “Thunderpig”) almost crashing while landing in heavy cross winds at Geneseo…
USS Boston submarine weapons officer recalls when he remained locked in his stateroom for two hours during test depth testing (the door wedged shut because during the dive the hull compressed the deck above the stateroom)
‘When the Thanksgiving lunch meal was ready, a crew member knocked on my stateroom door to invite me to the meal. I walked to the door, turned the handle, and…
‘Tony LeVier [the test pilot who flew the first flight of the U-2] was sitting at Bob Gilliland’s bar when we arrived. The story of how the U-2 was named…