Rare Bird: The Curtiss A-18 Shrike II
Only 13 were built — and eight suffered landing gear collapses. The rare twin-engine ground-attack anomaly of the 1930s US Army Air Corps.
Aircraft
Profiles of notable, rare, and historically significant aircraft by Col. Walter J. Boyne — from racing legends to revolutionary prototypes.
Rare Birds
Rare Bird: The Vultee XP-54 "Swoose Goose"
Winner of the radical R-40C fighter competition, with a pusher engine, twin booms, pressurised cockpit, and downward ejection seat — doomed by engine trouble and the march of conventional design.
The Bonney Gull: Folded Wings
Leonard Bonney's 1928 bird-inspired monoplane with variable-incidence, variable-sweep, and folding aluminum wings — anticipating the F-111 by decades. It killed its designer on its first flight.
Rare Bird: The Curtiss XP-31 Swift
The last serious fighter design from a company in decline — and how it lost to the Boeing P-26A Peashooter, symbolising the end of Curtiss as a fighter manufacturer.
Rare Bird: Douglas XO-35 / XB-7
A remarkable gull-wing monoplane with retractable gear that showed Douglas's transition from biplanes to monoplanes — lean innovation against Curtiss-Wright corporate bloat.
General Aviation Gamble: The GA-43
Virginius Evans Clark — designer of the Clark Y airfoil, the Duramold process, and the GA-43 single-engine airliner — one of the most gifted and least celebrated engineers in American aviation history.
Aircraft
The Gee Bee Story: Hottest Racers of the Time
The Granville Brothers' stunning Model Z, the legendary R-1 and R-2, Jimmy Doolittle's Thompson Trophy triumph, and the controversies that have never fully faded.
Messerschmitt Me 262: Goering Was the Bad Guy, Not Hitler
Boyne argues that Goering's fatal 1940 decision to cancel jet engine development — not Hitler's bomber order — was what truly doomed Germany's revolutionary jet fighter.
Boeing E-3A AWACS: Eyes in the Sky
From Chain Home radar to the rotating 30-foot rotodome — the indispensable eye of modern air power that controlled every coalition sortie in the Gulf War.
Phoenix Risen: The Transformation of the B-1B
From cancelled program and Congressional punching bag to the most effective weapon system of Operation Iraqi Freedom, delivering 43% of all JDAMs with just 1% of sorties.
Gee Bee Genius: Howell "Pete" Miller and the Super Sportsters
The engineer behind the legendary Gee Bee R-1 and R-2 Super Sportsters, Doolittle's Thompson Trophy win, the HM-1 Time Flies, and the MAC-1 that never got its chance.
More on Rocheville: The Designer as Artist
Charles Rocheville — designer of EMSCO transports, the Arctic Tern amphibian, and the HM-1 "Time Flies" — a visionary whose aircraft combined structural excellence with exceptional aesthetic harmony.
Aerial Oddities #1: Howell Miller's MAC-1
The MAC-1 — Howell "Pete" Miller's push-pull tandem twin that never flew successfully — traced through the Gee Bee racers, the Q.E.D., and the HM-1 "Time Flies".