Free Republic

The late, great Sean Connery offered several classic “one-liners” in his lengthy career, and among the best was in 1996’s The Rock, when as a former MI-6 operative, he states bluntly, “Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and f*ck the prom queen.” The YF-23 Story Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor can be seen as the winner in this case, and while it never had such relations with a prom queen, it has earned a reputation as the most capable air superiority fighter ever to fly. The “loser” was the Northrop-McDonnell Douglas YF-23, an experimental aircraft that competed in...

How incoming enemy aircraft were detected before the invention of radar Strange acoustic "ears" before radar; old time pictures of listening posts ...

They’d fly it again, if they had the chance. Among the group gathered at Delaware’s Dover Air Force Base, there’s a man for every crew station at the ready. They flew, maintained, navigated, and sometimes cursed one of the least understood aircraft in the history of the U.S. Air Force, the Douglas C-133 Cargomaster. In a conference room at Dover’s Air Mobility Command Museum, papers are shuffled—Where was that article from the base news? Smudgy documents, their margins trailing off the page from copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy Xeroxing, are offered. A small stack of VHS tapes forms a centerpiece. The men, some slowed...

What's faster than a speeding bullet, doesn't require a cape and isn't deterred by kryptonite? It's called the X-51 Waverider...and is the latest creation of Boeing and Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne. This past May it completed the longest hypersonic combustion (scramjet) powered flight in aviation history, reaching a speed of about Mach five, or five times the speed of sound. A scramjet engine is often likened to an air-breathing engine...it has no moving parts, and sucks in air from the atmosphere, rather than using oxidizers or additional fuel. It is new technology engineers say will allow aircraft to fly faster...

The UK's 70th anniversary commemorations of the Battle of Britain attracted an unusual visitor to the Royal International Air Tattoo: a rare Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter. Owned by EADS, the aircraft is one of only a handful of the more than 34,000 Bf 109-class fighters produced which remain airworthy. Also known as "Red Seven", the aircraft was built in 1958 and served with the Spanish air force until 1965, before later taking a starring role in the 1969 film The Battle of Britain. Now carrying Luftwaffe markings, the Bf 109 was due to mark the anniversary by flying in formation...

1962 the Soviets swapped a U.S. airman to the Americans in return for their spies, but they kept the pilot's plane. Here's what happened to it. By Joe Pappalardo It looks like Russia and the U.S. are negotiating the biggest spy swap since the Cold War ended, as accused and convicted spies in both nations are set to be bartered, and some being moved from prisons in America to Vienna in anticipation of a deal. The episode harkens to the 1960s, when spies were traded to maintain the brittle peace between nations. The most famous of these cases involved Francis...

Depending on who’s talking, the North American F-107A was either the best fighter the Air Force didn’t have the sense to buy, or a politically flawed loser from the outset. The F-107A will be remembered forever, if it is remembered at all, for being configured as no jet had been before or since: the sharp-edged maw of its air intake, feeding a prototype Pratt & Whitney YJ-75 engine, was just above and behind the cockpit, giving the otherwise sleek fighter the look of a fourth grader with an oversize backpack. In an era of dart-like Mirages and Delta Daggers, the...

A prototype YF-22 Raptor fighter plane that was built in Palmdale, Calif., flight tested here, and put on temporary display at the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, returned to Edwards AFB where it will stay for Air Force Flight Test Center Museum visitors to see. With approximately 100 military and civilians in attendance, Maj. Gen David Eichhorn, Air Force Flight Test Center commander, welcomed all to the AFFTC Museum for the dedication of the Raptor June 11. "This aircraft is a great addition to our museum out here and commemorates what Edwards is all about," General...

In May 1985, a Boeing 767 operated by Trans World Airlines became the first twin-engine airliner allowed to fly directly from St. Louis, Missouri, TWA’s hub, to Frankfurt, Germany, without altering its course to comply with an international requirement that it never be more than an hour’s flying time from an airport where it could land. The rule harkens back to the days of piston engines, which were so unreliable that at least four were considered necessary for a long flight over the ocean or hostile terrain. Even with four engines, airliners sometimes had to ditch—most notably the Boeing 377...

The American F-86 Sabres stopped the MiG-15s—and their Russian pilots—at the Yalu. In August 1950, a Soviet air division with 122 MiG-15 jet fighters arrived in northeastern China and set up headquarters at Antung on the Yalu River, the dividing line between Chinese Manchuria and North Korea. On Oct. 18, an American RB-29 reconnaissance aircraft spotted 75 fighters on the ramp at Antung, but that did not raise much alarm for Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s United Nations Command or the US Far East Air Forces. Nor was there any great concern on Nov. 1 when a flight of F-51 Mustangs was...

The family of Lt. Col. Bruce Hinton, the first F-86 pilot to score a MiG-15 kill during the Korean War, donated several items to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. On Dec. 17, 1950, Hinton, who was commander of the 336th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing, led a flight of four F-86s over northwestern North Korea. To trick the communists, the Sabre pilots flew at the same altitude and speed as F-80s typically did on missions, and they used F-80 call signs. Hinton spotted four MiGs at a lower altitude, and he led his flight in...

It was conceived in TAC's darkest hour, developed out of a revolutionary concept, designed without role compromise and created for its pilot above all. The F-15 Eagle has since matured and it is without doubt the world's foremost air superiority fighter, having destroyed scores of opponents, from Foxbats to F-4s, in aerial combat without ever sustaining losses. It is the Ultimate MiG-Killer. The F-15 Eagle was born as FX or Fighter eXperimental and just like its nominal predecessor, the F-111, it was another child of the USAF Tactical Air Command (TAC). The Vietnam war was a very rude awakening for...

man who walked on wings. Two daredevil pilots. A five-gallon can of fuel. Aerial refueling began as a stunt, rather than a key defense capability that today keeps America's military going. A maneuver that then probably earned the participants a few bucks has transformed into a multibillion-dollar industry with thousands of workers. From a man leaping from one aircraft to another, to what amounts to a fireman's hose connecting two planes, to today's high-tech boom system, aerial refueling has evolved dramatically over the last 89 years. Here's a look at Boeing's role. Early efforts The first refueling in the air...

Northrop Grumman's RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system (UAS) made aviation history Feb. 2 when it successfully completed its first roundtrip flight from the company's Palmdale, Calif., manufacturing facility. AF-20, a Block 30 Global Hawk built for the U.S. Air Force, performed the historic mission, soaring at altitudes of 58,300 feet for approximately four hours and 18 minutes. "This was the first time ever that the same Global Hawk has taken off and landed in a single mission from Palmdale, heralding a new era of flights in and out of the facility," said George Guerra, Northrop Grumman vice president of...

Had it not been for ball bearings, Schweinfurt might have remained a small town in Bavaria and escaped the notice of history. However, it was there in 1883 that a local mechanic, Friedrich Fischer, invented the machine that made possible mass production of ball bearings. In 1906, his son founded the Kugelfischer firm, which became the cornerstone of the industry. World War II created a huge demand for ball bearings. The German aviation industry alone used 2.4 million of them a month. Production was concentrated in Schweinfurt, where five plants turned out nearly two-thirds of Germany’s ball bearings and roller...

Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the loss of the U.S. Navy airship USS Macon, NOAA today announced that the wreck site on the seafloor within Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Macon, a 785-foot dirigible was one of the largest airships in the world – comparable in size to the RMS Titanic. It was intended to serve as a scout ship for the Pacific Fleet and had the ability to launch and recover Sparrowhawk biplanes. In service less than two years, the Macon, based at Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, Calif.,...

The name of the super-secret project was Suntan. It was to be the ultimate reconnaissance airplane, flying so high and so fast—it was to cruise above 100,000 feet at Mach 2—that detection would be unlikely and interception impossible. But it also would have been a giant winged thermos bottle, with a fuel tank full of liquid hydrogen at –400 degrees Fahrenheit and its outer skin baking at 350 degrees or more. A proposed hydrogen liquefaction plant dedicated to producing fuel for several of the airplanes would have sucked up 10 percent of the natural gas supply of Los Angeles in...

The F-4 Phantom II lives. But the life it leads today is an odd one. It still flies in other countries; in northern Iraq, for example, the Turks use it in combat with the Kurds. But in the United States, it leads a twilight existence. It’s a warplane, but it no longer fights. Its mission is weapons testing, but no pilot flies it. Mostly, you’ll find these F-4s either sitting in the desert or lying at the bottom of the sea. The F-4 entered service in 1960, flying for the U.S. Navy. After studying its potential for close air support,...

BRECKENRIDGE - Nelson Ezell doesn't simply repair old airplanes; he brings them back from the dead.And not just any planes.Some of the world's rarest aircraft enter his business as little more than a pile of rubble only to leave his nondescript hangar at the Stephens County Airport, about 115 miles west of Fort Worth, to become part of aviation buffs' prized collections.A look around the cramped hangar provides a sense of Ezell's craft.A Lockheed P-38L, one of the world's rarest planes, sits in a corner. When the multimillion-dollar restoration is complete, the P-38 Lightning will be one of only five...

LONG BEACH, Calif., May 23, 2006 -- Boeing [NYSE: BA] today delivered its final two 717 airplanes to Midwest Airlines and AirTran Airways in a ceremony before thousands of employees, retirees and dignitaries in Long Beach, Calif. The deliveries conclude commercial airplane production in Southern California that began in the 1920s with the Douglas Aircraft Co. The 717 program, which produced 156 airplanes, pioneered breakthrough business and manufacturing processes for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. "Our production system is an industry benchmark because of the lean manufacturing and employee involvement practices we pioneered on the 717 in Long Beach," said Boeing Commercial...