Build Your Own Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat
During Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France in August 1944, Observation Fighter Squadron 1 (VOF-1) pilots Ensign Alfred Wood and Lt. (j.g.) Edward Olszewski took turns flying the same Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat, shooting down a total of four German aircraft.
Perfect Trap: The Godfather of Naval Aviation
Remarkable career of naval aviation pioneer Frederick “Trap” Trapnell encompassed biplanes, airships, WWII fighters, research planes and early carrier jets.
Jesse L. Brown: The U.S. Navy’s First Black Aviator
The son of a sharecropper, Mississippi-born Jesse Leroy Brown would do whatever it took to become a pilot and break the navy's color barrier
Mystery of the Tuskegee Top Guns’ Missing Trophy
After a group of Tuskegee pilots win a 1949 Air Force competition, their trophy mysteriously goes missing. Was it a military screw-up or racial animus?
Firebombers! Flying on the Edge to Fight Fires
As last fall’s California wildfires demonstrated, the demand for aerial firefighters and the dangers they face have never been greater.
Forgotten First Flight Across the South Atlantic
It took three floatplanes and 79 days, but a pair of Portuguese airmen succeeded in crossing the South Atlantic by air five years before Lindbergh’s famous flight
What Made This First Homebuilt Airplane So Dangerous?
History’s first homebuilt entrepreneur named his aircraft after an insect.
Able Dog: Was the AD Skyraider the Best Attack Bomber Ever Built?
The Douglas AD Skyraider wasn't pretty, but its pilots and maintenance crews dubbed it the Able Dog because of its handling and dependability. Some still regard it as "the best airplane ever made for close-in attack."
The Engine That Won World War II
The course of World War II would have been very different without Rolls-Royce’s immortal Merlin engine.
The U.S. Navy’s Curtiss NC-4: First Across the Atlantic
In the spring of 1919, three Navy-Curtiss flying boats set out to beat the competition and be the first to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
Alex Vraciu: The Indestructible WWII Ace
He shot down 19 Japanese planes. But he lost three Hellcats - they called him 'Grumman's best customer'
Saberjet Secrets
Inadequate technical information concerning modifications to the fabled F-86 led to a series of major takeoff accidents
In the P-51 Mustang’s Wake
The interesting question today is not whether the Mustang was fast, but why
