Aircraft Archives

The super battleship Yamato is shaken by explosions as the Vought F4U Corsair flown by Lt. Hal Jackson speeds away from its target. Jackson and other pilots from the USS Intrepid were among the many American pilots who took part in sinking the giant Japanese vessel.

Aircraft

Japanese Battleship Yamato Makes Its Final Stand

Dy Gerald Astor

In the late afternoon of April 6, 1945, five days after American GIs and leathernecks scrambled onto an Okinawa beach a scant 500 miles from Japan, two U.S. Read more

Aircraft

The Repulse and Prince of Wales Battleships: How They Sunk

By Joseph M. Horodyski

During the 1920s and 1930s Great Britain built up its Far East defenses steadily if slowly, centering around Singapore as its primary naval base in the Pacific area. Read more

During the 1943 Battle of Kursk in Russia, specialized antitank versions of the Junkers Ju-87 known as “Gustavs” used tungsten-core shells to knock out Soviet tanks. With its upgraded speed, firepower, and armor, the “Dora” (D-series) version of the Ju-87 proved crucial in supporting ground troops and destroying Soviet antiaircraft batteries.

Aircraft

The Stuka

By Richard Rule

During World War II the exploits of certain aircraft saw them indelibly associated with the battles in which they fought. Read more

A flight of Supermarine Spitfire fighters is a breathtaking sight in the sky above Europe. The Spitfire received tremendous credit for defeating the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain.

Aircraft

Deadly Thoroughbred Unleashed

By Michael D. Hull

Fast, graceful, and deadly, the British Supermarine Spitfire was one of the most recognizable and famous fighter planes of World War II. Read more

Aircraft

Consolidated B-24 Liberator: The Loyal “Lumbering Lib”

By Michael D. Hull

A host of famous fighters and bombers in the Allied arsenal spearheaded the aerial offensives that helped secure victory against the Axis powers in World War II. Read more

Aircraft

The Rise and Fall of the Japanese ‘Zero’

By Mark Carlson

For thousands of Allied airmen the most terrifying sight they ever beheld was a Mitsubishi A6M Zero bearing down on them—burnished black cowling over a snarling Sakae engine, staccato bursts flashing from two machine guns and two cannon—often the last thing they ever saw. Read more

Lt. Benjamin Foulois and Orville Wright fly over Virginia countryside in 1909, testing a Wright flier for the U.S. Army. The test was successful and Foulois began a lifetime of promoting U.S. airpower.

Aircraft

Benny Delahauf Foulois

By Michael D. Hull

Resembling a “collection of bamboo poles more or less indefinitely attached to a gasoline engine,” the U.S. Read more

Aircraft

USS Franklin and Father O’Callahan

By Michael D. Hull

On March 3, 1945, the 27,100-ton aircraft carrier USS Franklin churned out of Pearl Harbor and headed westward for the war zone. Read more

Aircraft

General Douglas MacArthur’s Navy

By Glenn Barnett

In November 1941, the U.S. Asiatic Fleet weighed anchor in Shanghai, China, for the last time. Alarmed by the growing hostility and aggressiveness of the Japanese, Admiral Thomas Hart ordered the outnumbered and outgunned American vessels moved to the relative safety of Manila Bay in the Philippines. Read more

Aircraft

Clash in the Sibuyan Sea

By John Wukovits

In warfare, desperate times call for desperate measures, and in the fall of 1944 the empire of Japan found itself in precisely that predicament. Read more

Aircraft

Famous Fighter Aces: Edward Mannock

By Mauriel P. Joslyn

The agent from the American consul followed a Turkish guard through the prisoner compound. It was early 1915, and he had come on behalf of the Red Cross seeking prisoner exchange for the worst cases in this miserable, disease-ridden place. Read more

In this painting by John Hamilton, the devastation wrought in Narvik harbor by a marauding British naval squadron is readily apparent.

Aircraft

The Battles of Narvik & The Norwegian Campaign

by Thomas Haymes

The German mountain troops were dug into their shallow, frozen foxholes waiting for the enemy ski troops to appear across the horizon. Read more

A Sea Harrier takes off from the airfield at Port Stanley during Falklands war. In the background is a destroyed Argentinian Air Force IA 58 Pucará counter-insurgency (COIN) aircraft.

Aircraft

The BAe Sea Harrier

By John E. Spindler

At 1:25 p.m. on May 1, 1982, the Sea Harrier naval jet fighter became the symbol of British resolve. Read more

Two Grumman F9F-2 Panther fighters dump fuel as they fly past the carrier USS Princeton, during Korean War operations in May 1951. Some 18 months later, U.S. Navy pilot Lieutenant E. Royce Williams would take on seven Soviet MiG-15s, downing four of them, diminishing the aircraft’s reputation as invincible.

Aircraft

U.S. Navy Pilot Lieutenant E. Royce Williams

By Mark Carlson

One of the most remarkable events in modern naval aviation was kept a secret for almost half a century. Read more

Hueys prepare to pick up members of Company A, 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry to airlift them to a reported enemy ammunition dump in Thang Binh province, 24 miles north of Chu Lai, Jan. 17, 1968.

Aircraft

The UH-1 Iroquois “Huey” Helicopter

By Ignacio Pullum

As an icon of the Vietnam War and an angel of mercy for American troops who fought there, the Bell UH-1 Iroquois, affectionately known as the “Huey,” has gone on to become the most recognizable helicopter in the world. Read more

Aircraft

The Workhorse Lancaster

By Nigel Price

Powerful, brisling with firepower and able to carry an amazingly large bombload, the majestic Avro Lancaster, along with the iconic Supermarine Spitfire, has come to symbolize the might of the Royal Air Force in World War II. Read more

Aircraft

Wreaking Havoc

By Sam McGowan

Few airplanes can claim the honor of being credited with changing the course of World War II, but the Douglas A-20 Havoc twin-engine light bomber is one that can. Read more

Aircraft

The Raven Forward Air Controllers

By William E. Welsh

Raven forward air controller Charles Edwin Engle usually took his Cessna 0-1 “Bird Dog” up to an altitude of 12,000 feet over northern Laos to await the arrival of a flight of inbound A-1E Skyraiders from Thailand. Read more

Aircraft

Bloody Clash at the Battle of Ia Drang

By Christopher Miskimon

Specialist 4 George McDonald leaped out of a UH-1 helicopter on November 14, 1965, into a hellish firefight. Read more

Aircraft

Sen Toku: Japan’s Underwater Aircraft Carriers

By Steven D. Lutz

As soon as Colonel James Doolittle’s B-25 raid struck Japan in April 1942, Japan sought to wreak revenge on the United States, but by 1944 devastating aerial bombings on Japan by the Americans had become all too regular. Read more

From Around the Network

Heinrich Himmler: The Rise and Fall of Hitler’s Third Reichsführer-SS

Death & Destruction

Requiem for a Prince and a Sergeant

Operation Cartwheel: Seizing the Solomons and Beyond