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.
Four Grumman F6F-5 Hellcats swept in from the sea, hunting enemy aircraft attempting to get out from under the U.S. Navy’s aerial umbrella. Heading inland, the fighter leader spotted two twin-engine bombers bearing enemy markings on their wings.
Remarkable career of naval aviation pioneer Frederick “Trap” Trapnell encompassed biplanes, airships, WWII fighters, research planes and early carrier jets.
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
Charles McGee never thought much of flying until he started training at Tuskegee. When he finally left the U.S. Air Force, he had 30 years and three wars behind him.
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?
As last fall’s California wildfires demonstrated, the demand for aerial firefighters and the dangers they face have never been greater.
Designed as a carrier-based torpedo bomber, the Fieseler Fi-167 ended up hunting Yugoslav Partisans when its ship never materialized.
Its development was kept under wraps for 14 years, but by 1991, the F-117 Nighthawk had become a household word.
During Gregory Boyington's brief, tempestuous career with the AVG, he was responsible for losing more airplanes than he shot down.
A bromance blossomed between Archibald Hoxsey and Theodore Roosevelt in 1910 when the early aviator took TR for a short flight—the first by a U.S. president.
It’s easy enough to design a bad airplane, but it takes real gumption to put it into production despite all signs to the contrary.
Heroes come in all stripes, including a freshly minted second lieutenant who had the courage to take control of a bomber from his superior officer.
Seventy years ago, American pilots accomplished a mission: impossible—and set a military precedent.
It was one of the biggest air raids in the entire campaign for the Solomon Islands. More than a year after U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal, Navy TBF Avengers and SBD Dauntless dive bombers were to hit the Japanese base on Ballale,
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