Free Republic

On Monday, Hawaiian governor Josh Green announced that his administration was considering acquiring properties in the seaside resort town of Lahaina that had been destroyed by the recent wildfires. He vowed to prevent foreign buyers from swooping in to exploit the tragedy, suggesting the state was better suited to take control of the land "I'm already thinking of ways for the state to acquire that land so that we can put it into workforce housing, to put it back into families, or make it open spaces in perpetuity as a memorial to the people who were lost," Green said while...

Rumors continue to swirl around the mysterious death of Lt. Col. Eric "Doc" Schultz near Area 51 on September 5th. Various theories exist, including one that says he was the commander of the elite and shadowy "Red Hats" squadron that secretly flies foreign tactical aircraft for test and training purposes. Make sure to read all about these theories here. Now a report has emerged from the Russian website Radio Moscow claiming that a famous Russian test pilot was not only in contact with Schultz shortly before the crash, but that he warned him of executing certain maneuvers while flying Russian...

One of the greatest pilots in the history of aviation died this morning, according to reports. Bob Hoover, a World War II fighter pilot, a former Air Force test pilot, and the chase plane pilot for Chuck Yeager when he broke the sound barrier for the first time, was 94.

Inside the ultimate test drive: How British test pilots put the Eurofighter Typhoon through its paces British test pilots from BAE Systems have lifted the lid on how they push the Eurofighter Typhoon combat jet to the edge of its limits as part of an ‘ultimate test drive’ before delivering the aircraft to customers including the Royal Air Force. The jet’s power, speed and agility are all brought to the fore as test pilots, based at Warton, Lancashire, take the controls of each Typhoon for the first time – as soon as they roll out from the factory floor to...

... Easter had a top-secret job offer. If Moseley accepted, he would have to commit for four years, he couldn't tell anyone about the job and he would have to accept the job before knowing what it was. "And he said, 'You've got 30 seconds and if you don't say yes, this conversation never happened.' Well, that was just too intriguing to turn down," Moseley says. "So I said, 'Absolutely.' And he'd given me a telephone number and an intersection." ...

In the cockpit of the sleek, black aircraft slung underneath the wing of the B-52 bomber, my interphone crackles. "Ah, Robert, it’s a lovely morning," says Jack Allavie, the commander of the B-52 launch aircraft. "Yes it is, Jack," I respond while running through the preflight checklist for our July 17, 1962 mission. The North American Aircraft X-15 was designed to investigate flight at hypersonic (Mach 5-plus) speeds and extremely high altitudes, and the effects of aerodynamic heating on aircraft surfaces. It was the first aircraft to fly Mach 4, Mach 5, and Mach 6—and I had the good fortune...

When Robert White shot through the sky in a rocket-powered X-15 airplane nearly 50 years ago, he earned a place in the development of America's space program that those in the field still talk about. First to break Mach 4 — four times the speed of sound. First to break Mach 5. First to break Mach 6 —more than 4,000 miles per hour. All in a few short months in 1961. Then in 1962 the young test pilot with Hollywood good looks nosed his airplane 59 miles above the earth to be the first to take a winged craft into...

Interview: Yang Guoxiang One of China's top test pilots recalls the H-Bomb that almost backfired. By Bob Bergin Air & Space Magazine, January 01, 2010 When your assignment is to drop a live nuclear bomb, you’d better not return to base with it. But that’s just what happened in 1971 to Yang Guoxiang, a pilot with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, who told his harrowing tale to Bob Bergin, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer who writes about the aviation history of Southeast Asia and China. Bergin interviewed Yang in Kunming, China, in early 2009, with the assistance of...

REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala., Nov. 3, 2009 – Experimental test pilot Army Chief Warrant Officer Cary Nadeau views his job as being the consumer advocate for Army aviators. And like any good consumer advocate, he reaches out to his customers – in his case, in combat zones. Army Chief Warrant Officer Cary Nadeau, one of only 30 experimental test pilots in the Army, has left Redstone Arsenal, Ala., for a six-month deployment in Iraq, where he will provide technical and liaison support to a combat aviation brigade for the Chinook helicopter's new laser-based countermeasure system and for the brigade's entire fleet...

Former Boeing instructor pilot Anthony Keyter has filed a federal civil lawsuit against Boeing, alleging that the Chicago-based aerospace company plotted to murder him. Boeing test pilot Anthony Keyter says that Boeing plotted to kill him. The lawsuit indicates that Keyter lives in Gig Harbor and that he is representing himself. The suit, filed Monday with the U.S. District Court of Western Washington, charges that Boeing plotted to kill Keyter after Keyter filed another civil complaint against President George W. Bush. "President Bush, via his agents, contacted high level executives of The Boeing Company and initiated a criminal plot to...

EDWARDS AFB ­- Space shuttle Endeavour astronauts are going into space wearing a mission patch designed by NASA Dryden Flight Research Center research pilot Mark Pestana. Mission STS-123 will take to the international space station the Japanese Kibo module, which will hold electronic equipment and serve as a storage area for experiment materials. It also carries the Canadian Dextre robot, which will attach to the station's robotic arm and allow astronauts to replace hardware outside the station without doing a spacewalk. Pestana's logo depicts a shuttle with its mechanical arm extending the Kibo module to the station. Behind the shuttle...

SEATTLE - Clayton Scott, who served as Bill Boeing's personal pilot and later become a top Boeing Co. test pilot, has died at age 101. Scott's death was confirmed by Eden Hopkins, a spokeswoman for The Museum of Flight, which is hosting a memorial service for him Oct. 6. The service will be open to the public. He apparently died of a heart attack at his apartment in Mercer Island, east of Seattle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported for Friday editions. Scott was born July 15, 1905, in Coudersport, Pa., and later moved to the Pacific Northwest. An early aviation buff,...

Test pilot Joe Walker was killed June 8, 1966, when his F-104 chase plane collided in midair with an XB-70 supersonic bomber during a formation flight for a publicity photo. The catastrophic accident took the life of the top NASA test pilot, who earned astronaut wings by piloting the X-15 into space three times, as well as that of Air Force Maj. Carl Cross, one of two pilots of the XB-70. Thursday, on the 40th anniversary of that fateful flight, Walker's son and other admirers visited the crash site in a remote portion of the Mojave Desert to pay their...

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - Search teams combed the forests of northern Georgia Thursday for a missing airplane registered to legendary test pilot Scott Crossfield, the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound. Officials did not immediately know who was flying the single-engine plane or whether Crossfield was aboard when it left Alabama for Virginia on Wednesday morning.

Suzanna Darcy-Hennemann has taken a Boeing 777-200LR jetliner above 30,000 feet and let it stall, testing whether it can recover without a precipitous drop. She has put it into a dive, approaching the speed of sound. Soon, while accelerating down the runway, she'll shut one of the two engines to test that the jet can still take off safely. How's that for a dream job at 52? Capt. Darcy-Hennemann is a senior test pilot on Boeing's 777 program and lead pilot on current test flights of the 777-200LR, the latest ultra-long-range model. She began initial flights over Puget Sound...

It has been 35 years since NASA pilot Bill Dana landed an X-15 on the dusty lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base. It was Oct. 24, 1968, and Dana had just completed the 199th flight in the X-15 program. He was eager for another turn in the cockpit because a high-altitude camera experiment did not go well that day, and he wanted to repeat the test. It was not to be. The X-15 program was ended less than two months later, before the 200th flight could be made, and Dana would carry the distinction of being the last pilot to...

WASHINGTON - One of the Air Force's prized - and politically vulnerable - (KRT) - F/A-22 Raptor fighter jets nearly crashed during a recent practice flight, prompting an investigation, service officials confirm. The previously unreported incident occurred Sept. 19 near Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., officials said, when an experienced F-15 pilot with less than 20 hours in the exotic new F/A-22 attempted a dogfight maneuver that sent the aircraft plummeting downward in an upside-down spiral. The unidentified pilot became disoriented as the $161 million plane plunged more than 10,000 feet from a beginning altitude of 13,000 to 15,000 feet,...

State Sen. William J. "Pete" Knight said Tuesday that it is going to take a "mini-revolution" to turn around the state of California. "I don't mean shoot 'em up," he said. "California's being governed by San Francisco and Los Angeles," said the Palmdale Republican, addressing about 50 members of the Greater Antelope Valley Chamber of Commerce during a luncheon at the AV Country Club. "California is sinking under the influence of the liberal Democrats," Knight said.Knight scoffed at criticisms by recall opponents that the attempt to oust Gov. Gray Davis impedes the Democratic process. Reading from a list of names,...

Russell M. "Rusty" Roth entered aviation history on Dec. 9, 1952, over Edwards Air Force Base, flying Republic Aviation Corp.'s XF-91 Thunderceptor rocket-boosted jet fighter prototype, making it the first combat-type airplane to exceed the speed of sound while flying straight and level. A World War II P-38 fighter pilot, Roth flew 132 combat missions in the South Pacific before arriving at Edwards. As the assistant chief of the flight development branch, he flight-tested the XB-43 and F-86 as well as the Northrop Flying Wing N9M. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School Class 1949-D at Wright...

Steve Austin who? Few people know there was a real $6 million man: Bruce Peterson, a NASA Dryden Research pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in the 1960s, was a pioneer in the testing of lifting bodies. His all-too-real 1967 crash at Edwards was used in the opening credits of the 1970s television show "The Six Million Dollar Man," starring Lee Majors as Austin. A former Marine Corps pilot, Peterson joined NASA in 1960 as an aeronautical engineer and was a project pilot on the Rogallo paraglider research vehicle, or Parasev, program. Parasev evaluated the use of an inflatable, flexible...