/THE MOST SINCERE FLATTERY IN AVIATION HISTORY: /THE TUPOLEV TU-4. It was famously said of Ginger Rogers that she did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels. The same comparison might be drawn between the Tupolev Tu-4 and the Boeing B-29, for the Russians did almost everything the Americans did by reverse engineering (the ...
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/ Japan’s Silver Bullet Air Power Blunder World War II /Churchill described the Soviet Union as a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma". The serial Japanese airpower blunders during World War II are more aptly compared to the layers of an onion, one tightly encasing another. The mistakes vary in size and scope from the ...
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The list of aviation heroes America has taken to heart is endless, from the Wright Brothers down to the latest heroes from Iraq. The country has a penchant for adventure lovers, and the smiling, clean living swash-buckling aviator has been embraced almost without exception. Even those with human relations flaws, such as the acerbic Douglas ...
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In a very happy coincidence, the invention of the airplane and the popularity of the motion picture came about at roughly the same time. The December 17, 1903 flight of the Wright Brothers is accompanied in film history by two famous productions, A Trip to the Moon in 1902 and The Great Train Robbery in ...
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Curtiss XP-31 in flightRARE BIRD: The Curtiss XP-31 /Have you ever had a friend who was getting to be of a certain age, and you noticed that he or she was beginning to slow down, not taking the stairs two-at-a-time anymore, reluctant to stay out late at night, a little more forgetful than usual? (O.K. this ...
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It used to be that there were weights and balances in relating history. Major events drew more attention, while lesser ones passed into oblivion. No more—YouTube has completely revised the scene, and something as unimportant as the pathetic dweeb wailing over Britney Spears can soak up more hits than major news events. This phenomenon also ...
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/WE NEED TO SINK SOME MORE BATTLESHIPS—METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING! IT HAS BEEN A WONDERFUL THING FOR ME TO BE A PART OF THE AIR FORCE FROM BASIC TRAINING AT LACKLAND IN 1951 THROUGH THE GLORIOUS EXPERIENCE OF FLYING B-47S FOR THE STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND TO THE VIETNAM WAR AND BEYOND. AND SINCE RETIREMENT I’VE WATCHED THE AIR ...
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/It was justifiably called "the airlift that saved Israel. One of the most critical but least celebrated airlifts in history unfolded over a desperate 32 days in the fall of 1973. An armada of Military Airlift Command aircraft carried thousands of tons of materiel over vast distances into the midst of the most ferocious fighting the ...
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On November 1, 1952, the United States detonated the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, popularly called the “hydrogen bomb.” The experiment took place on Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific and immediately generated a controversy from leftists that resonates today. It was immediately said that if we detonated a hydrogen bomb, the Soviet Union would follow. What ...
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Calling the Boeing B-47 “the most significant multi-jet aircraft of all time” might be attributed to the bias of an old B-47 pilot, were it not for the incontrovertible facts of the situation. The Boeing Company took a gigantic gamble to create the B-47. It combined an advanced planform, with wings and horizontal surfaces swept back ...
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