Military Aircraft

The swift focus of the Allied bomber campaign against the German’s oil industry had immediate and far-reaching effects, compared with the 175,000 tons of aviation fuel it produced in April 1944. In June of that same year, German oil production fell to just over 55,000 tons, less than a third of the previous years output. Unless something was done,... 

Without a doubt, the Bleriot XI monoplane was one of the most revolutionizing aircraft of the Twentieth Century. Designed and built by the famous French pioneer, Louis Bleriot, it became a staple in the early days of aviation when, with his inventor at the controls, it managed to cross the English Channel on the morning of July 25th 1909. The amazing... 

The once mighty British Royal Air Force Base at Warton, home to major elements of the British Royal Air Force during World War II, is now a development and testing facility for the BAE System Corporation, the last of Great Britain’s biggest aircraft design and developmental companies. Warton’s runways had been proving ground for some of... 

This past summer, the United States’ President, Barack Obama sent to Congress his proposal for the Fiscal Year 2010 Defense Authorization Bill. As anticipated, the new Bill is full of deep cuts across all four branches of the military. A plethora of weapon system programs were slashed almost in half. Others, weren’t so lucky as twenty-two... 

After spending almost a decade ‘outside’ the bomber design business, Vladimir Myasishchev officially returned with a bang in the mid 1940′s. By early 1950, one of the most prolific Soviet aircraft designers of all time, in collaboration with GN Nazarov from Experimenta Design Bureau (OKB) # 22 and the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute... 

The Savoia-Marchetti S.55 has to be one of the most distinctive airplanes ever to take to the skies. The S.55 was conceived to meet a Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force) requirement calling for a long range, heavy carrying flying boat capable of delivering a lethal combination of free fall bombs and/or torpedoes. The aircraft first took to the... 

The war between the Central Powers, mostly Imperial Germany and Tsarist Russia lasted three hard fought years. It ended abruptly on October 1917 when the Bolshevik seized power in Moscow. When the Great War started on August 1914, Germany and Russia shared a vast frontier that stretched from the midway between Danzig and Riga near the Baltic coast,... 

Major Doug Soifer began to trim out the Astro-Inertial Navigation System control display while at the same time he adjusted the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) displays. It was the fifth hour of a very long, non-stop flight from the Kadena Air Force Base, located on the strategically important Island of Okinawa, to one of the more congestive areas of... 

Only thirty one units of the Saunders Roe A.27 ‘London’ biplane flying boat were built for the Royal Air Force Costal Command. The RAFCC,operated the type from 1936 to the fall of 1941. The ‘London’ is another sample of an aircraft which was obsolete before it reached front line units. The Saro A.27 was conceived in response... 

During the afternoon hours of September 23rd 1916, one of the ‘next generation’ super-Zeppelins, the L33, took to the air for its first operational mission: the bombing of downtown London. Just a few months before, the L33 was on the ground, getting its final fittings and adjustments. It was truly a remarkable piece of engineering. She was...