Aircraft
Skyknight
The major production version of the Skyknight was the F3D-2. Preliminary specifications for the F3D-2 were released by the Navy on May 23, 1949, and the letter of intent was issued in October of 1949. The F3D-2 had improved cockpit air conditioning, a thicker armored windshield, revised electronic equipment, as well as improved versions of interception, tail warning, and gun…
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Genesis of the U-2
The first Soviet giant bomber was the huge Myasishchev Mya-4 Bison swept-wing turbojet bomber, developed on the orders of Stalin beginning in 1949 as a plane that could reach the United States and return to base. It first became known to the West in 1955 when, much to Soviet Premier…
AMERICAN ACE LOUISÂ CURDES
Of all the American pilots who flew and fought in World War II, only a handful managed to shoot down aircraft from all three axis countries. And just one, Louis Curdes, scored an Axis trifecta plus an American plane to boot. Curdes’ unusual story has gone viral online, where it…
Italian Air Force Attacks Britain 1940
OPERATIONS FLOWN LIST OF Operations flown by the Corpo Aereo Italiano: 24 October – night raid – Felixstowe and Harwich 27 October – night raid – Ramsgate *29 October – daylight raid – Ramsgate 1 November – daylight fighter sweep over Kent 5 November – night raid – Felixstowe and…
Martin Baltimore
Baltimore Mk. IVs of 223 Squadron fly in a “Tedder Bomb Carpet” box formation to strike a railway at Sulmona, Italy, in 1944. By the spring of 1944, German troops on Crete and outlying islands were facing growing supply shortages. With air superiority largely in Allied hands, air transport was…
Aurora
Following the initial research and development of a hypersonic “scramjet”-powered aircraft in the early 1980s, and the funding of the National Aero space Plane (NASP) in 1984 (often mischaracterized as the “Orient Express”), rumors began to swirl that either the Air Force or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)…
Advanced Air Striking Force in France
Hawker Hurricane Mark Is of No. 73 Squadron RAF, based at Rouvres, France. The day before Britain declared war on the 3rd of September the Advanced Air Striking Force was dispatched to France, in it were ten squadrons of Fairey Battles. During the Phoney War one of the missions that…