Frenchman Henri Farman was already a celebrated cycling champion, race car driver and entrepreneur when he ordered a biplane from the world’s first airplane factory, Les Frères Voisin. Five months later, in January 1908, he won Ernest Archdeacon’s prize for the first officially observed heavier-than-air flight over a one-kilometer circular course.

A week after making Europe’s first flight outside France (in Belgium), Farman lunched with Wilbur Wright in Paris in June. They got on famously; when Wilbur explained his plans to make demonstration flights in France, Farman replied that he had accepted an offer from a consortium of St. Louis businessmen. He would get $25,000 for touring the United States for 90 days, plus $200 per flight. The organizer was Tom MacMechan, editor of American Aeronaut. “These public demonstrations ought to bring about a great popular realization of the practicability of dynamic flight,” enthused Aeronautics, another aviation journal. 

After learning that aviator Glenn Curtiss had flown his June Bug on July 4 to win the $25,000 Scientific American Cup for the first public powered flight in America, Farman crated his Voisin for shipment across the Atlantic. He sailed with his assistant, Maurice Herbster, and his wife, arriving in New York on July 26 to an enthusiastic welcome. Headed by Curtiss, a welcoming committee from the Aero Club of America chartered a tug to escort the Farmans’ ship to the pier, where automobiles whisked them to the Hotel Astor on Times Square.

Farman had become front-page news, where he was hailed as “the world’s champion aeronaut” and “the man with the practical aeroplane.” The military was keen to witness his demonstrations, and with Orville Wright planning test flights for the government at Fort Myer, Virginia, an international contest seemed possible. Farman even challenged Orville to a contest for a $10,000 purse, but Wright declined. Farman was unfazed: “If they consider their machines superior, why don’t they accept my challenge? I could gain much valuable data from a contest, and surely my machine, with its long list of record flights, has at least some points of information for my brother aviators.” 

As the venue for his demonstrations, Farman chose the horseracing track in Brighton Beach, New York, which in 1907 had been converted to host 24-hour endurance motor races known as “Grinds.” Farman arranged to remove large sections of an infield fence while he had his crates hoisted onto theatrical scenery trucks and unloaded in the track’s old betting ring. When customs officers did not arrive as expected to examine the contents, Farman sent away his hired stevedores. Then the revenue men finally arrived and Herbster had to recruit a crew of unskilled locals. They dropped one of the crates, damaging the airplane’s tail cell and rudder. Despite the damage, the appraiser declared the Voisin’s new Antoinette V8 engine to be the finest piece of machinery he had ever seen, saying that “all who examined the machine were greatly impressed with its workmanship, which is exquisite.” Farman spend the next day on repairs, reassembling the airframe and installing the engine. 

At a banquet at the Astor on July 30 one news account noted that “the ballroom was full of balloonites, with here and there a submarine fiend, an auto crank or a common scientist wedged in among the number.” Charles Manly, the engineer and test pilot for aviation experimenter Samuel Langley, congratulated France on its aviation experimenters and described Farman as “a man destined to do great good for aeronautics and create enthusiasm among millions.” Farman’s riposte was equally gracious to those on this side of the Atlantic: “We foreigners owe credit to Octave Chanute for the basic principles of our apparatus, and to the Wright brothers, pioneers after Mr. Chanute.” 

After the guests had consumed a model of the Voisin confected from spun sugar, Farman made a less-than-sweet dig at the secretive and litigious Wrights. “I carry on my experiments in public because that seems advantageous,” he said. “The work is difficult enough, and it is better for others to see what you are doing and for you to see what they are doing, each improving by the mistakes of the other.”

Farman was not alone in resenting the Wrights’ secrecy, even on home turf. The American Magazine of Aeronautics opined, “Farman has perhaps done more, through publicity, to brush away the cobwebs of doubt than the Wrights. Even here, we doubt that the Wrights ever flew, while we read of the Farman’s flights with less astonishment than at the invention of a headacheless booze.” James Means, editor of Aeronautical Annuals agreed, saying, “Owing to the public exhibitions of flights with motor-aeroplanes in France, the Frenchmen are in a fair way to get years ahead of us in aviation, as they did with the automobile.”

“We are disgusted with some American inventors who have been chasing the almighty dollar instead of solving the problems of flight,” railed MacMechan in the American Aeronaut. For impeding the free exchange of ideas, he argued, the Wrights should forfeit their place in history for making the world’s first airplane flight. He added, “After Farman’s flight, there will be no difficulty raising capital to finance the cost of building aeroplanes and conducting experiments.” 

First, though, Farman had to get into the air, and that was looking problematic. At only 840 yards, the racetrack was short and it was traversed by ruts and ditches. Ominously, Farman’s promised down payment of $6,000 failed to materialize, so track owner William Engeman was induced to mollify him with cash so the show could go on. 

Apart from finances and the small track, keeping the water-cooled Antoinette from overheating was Farman’s main problem. Its “total-loss” cooling system meant the engine water evaporated as it carried heat away, and since the Voisin had a marginal power/weight ratio, the airplane could carry only so much coolant. “If we could carry sufficient water,” Farman said, “we could stay in the air 30 hours as easily as 30 minutes.” Wind was his second concern: “A steady, strong wind is what you want—but if it becomes too strong, great care is needed. Trees and other obstacles can divert the wind. I generally fly 15 feet above the ground—I can fly higher, but never as high as your skyscrapers, although I hope to some day.” 

Ever cautious, Farman confided to the Daily Tribune, “When I risk my neck, as every man who mounts an aeroplane is bound to, I am at least certain that I have left nothing undone to make my apparatus as perfect as possible. I take no unnecessary risks—I could soar into the air to any height if my motor would work long enough. But it would be folly to ascend a yard higher than necessary, for the aeroplane is at present a very delicate machine and something may snap at any moment.” He managed the public’s expectations accordingly. “I want to emphasize to the American people that an aeroplane does not fly over the rooftops like a balloon. I hope they will not be disappointed to find that they can view airships without craning their necks.” 

On July 31, before his first public show, Farman flew for Aero Club members. According to the New York Times, “Several hundred persons were near the curtained-off part of the betting ring in which the machine is kept when it was pushed out. Then those who watched got some idea of the driving power of the propeller. A mechanician turned the motor over by twisting the blades while five men held the aeroplane, Mr Farman advanced the spark and opened the throttle. The whirling blades shook the shrubbery 60′ away as in a windstorm, while dust clouds were blown up 75′ away.… [T]he airscrew of the Voisin began to revolve swiftly, and the machine moved across the turf for 200 yards. It left the ground, mounted ten or twelve feet in the air and moved along with an easy, bird-like glide. Two-thirds of the way to the eastern extremity of the oval, a group of men with a wagonload of boards were busy covering a ditch. A calf ran about and the crowd infringed. As he bore down on these obstructions, Farman stopped his propeller, while the guiding planes were inclined downward. As the aeroplane neared the turf, Mr Farman let his propeller shoot around for a moment. This made the landing as gentle as that of any creature of the air. It was a delicate piece of airmanship, and the crowd cheered.” 

The first public day, Saturday, August 1, was less propitious. Attendance was poor. At a venue regularly attracting 20,000, only 2,000 people turned up. Weather balloons zigzagging across the sky indicated wind gusts of 22 mph, which prevented any ascents. Instead, Farman had the Voisin paraded before the grandstands and explained its workings. After being warned to hold their hats, the crowd gasped as the Antoinette fired, generating “a terrific blast of air back towards the hundreds behind. Instantly a cloud of straw hats went hurtling into the air, high into the roof of the grandstand. The blast cleared a path like a cyclone. Fifty people were blown off their feet.” 

Entertaining perhaps, but not what the crowd had paid to see. They dispersed resentfully when Farman announced by megaphone in his thick French accent that flights would be postponed. Admitting “the spanking sea breezes that met the conservative foreigner,” the New York Times acidly described Farman as “walking through the clover to see if the wind was strong enough to justify his determination not to fly.”

Thereafter, things got worse. No demonstration had been planned for the next day, Sunday, August 2, so no officials were present. But despite the forecast of continuing gusts, conditions were sunny and calmer. While Farman tuned his Voisin in the makeshift hangar, 500 of Saturday’s disgruntled visitors huddled outside. MacMechan assured them that Saturday’s tickets would be valid for future flights, but the crowd responded with a chorus of threats and started forcing the gates. 

When news of the fracas reached Farman, he acted swiftly. “I don’t blame them,” he said. “They paid to see me fly—many of them working people who can’t get here any other day. Let them in. Hurry!” To objections that there was no one to police the crowd, he replied “I have seen enough of the American people to satisfy me they don’t need police if you give them a fair show.”

Minutes later, the crowd surged through the gates, raced across the infield and surrounded the hangar so closely that it became impossible to roll out the Voisin. According to The Herald, “Farman, with his new-found confidence in American fairness, ordered the canvas doors to be drawn back, climbed on the machine and shouted at the crowd to stand back as the aeroplane was rolled out.” 

An announcer asked people to be patient, and most obeyed. The wind died down to a westerly breeze. “There came a clattering sound from the aeroplane, and a cloud of dust could be seen leaping into the air,” reported the Herald. “The propeller flashed faster and faster, then the great machine darted forward, rolling rapidly over the ground. 200 feet from the start, it leaped into the air, rose 25 feet and came whirring over the field with the speed of an express train. At the end of the flight the motor was stopped, the slant downward begun, the motor started again for a few revolutions to lessen the shock of landing, the machine rolled along for about 100 feet. For a second or two the crowd was silent before the throng in the grandstand stood and cheered, but it was all over in less than a minute. Then the crowd dashed across the field to tell Farman that he was not a fake after all, but the real thing. Farman took it all coolly and begged the men not to hurt the machine: ‘Aeroplanes are babies yet—in the crawling stage—and you must be patient with them.’ Many of the men who were yelling themselves into a state of perspiration over Farman’s achievement were only five minutes before denouncing him as a fraud and exciting the more unruly elements to demand their money back or ‘have fun’ with his machine….” 

The Voisin had made a public flight, but it appeared that the tour was doomed by the combination of inadequate spectacle, misleading advertising, poor organization and increasingly critical press. Farman offered to sell his Voisin for $6,000, even suggesting that the government might buy it for the Fort Myer trials. The popular Vanderbilt Cup race driver Joe Tracy made an offer, which Farman turned down. 

Matters didn’t improve. On August 5 Curtiss wrote, “Farman’s attempts were very disappointing. The first day he flew 140 yards at an elevation of three feet in 11 seconds, at about 20 mph. He made two such flights and then wheeled the machine back to the tent. Next day there were about 3,000 attending and as it was too windy, he did not attempt to fly.” On August 6 and 7, storms precluded further flights, with only three hops over the weekend; attendance by then was down to a few hundred, who showed more interest in the amateur motorcycle races organized at the last minute as an added attraction. 

Ironically, in France Wilbur Wright was triumphantly demonstrating the superiority of his machine to incredulous audiences at another racetrack, near Le Mans. As far as transatlantic rivalry was concerned, it was game over. By contrast, Farman’s backers fled back to St. Louis and the contractor who erected the hangar attached the Voisin for a debt of $120. Farman sent him $50. Warned that other creditors would soon follow, he hired a fast car, some wagons and a local work crew. By the early hours of August 14, the Voisin had been hastily repacked and hustled off to the Manhattan Custom House and loaded aboard a Cherbourg-bound freighter. 

With his machine safe, Farman accepted Thomas Edison’s invitation for a quick visit to the “play shop” at the great man’s New Jersey laboratory. There, he saw the Voisin flicker jerkily onto a screen in a short film that was advertised for public screenings in that month’s Variety.

Stardom notwithstanding, Farman had only received a fraction of his promised fees. His wife was unimpressed by the visit to America. To the New York Sun, she compared audience expectations on both sides of the Atlantic. “The people here are not ready for such an advanced idea,” she said. “They would rather witness a race between two donkeys than see Farman fly. The machine is too technical for them to grasp and Farman flew so easily that they thought it didn’t mean much. He would have drawn more crowds if he had made several ineffectual attempts to sail and broken the machine a little—enough to give an idea that it was dangerous. In France it is different. Over there, where flights have been public and no one has to pay, I’ve seen 30,000 present at a flight.” The editor agreed: “Farman’s work seems almost too businesslike. At least he might make the machine wobble a little and dip dangerously to remind us that he really is flying and not running an automobile on some invisible aerial road.” 

For Aeronautics, the problem was the venue. “If the grounds had been large enough to allow long circular flights, people would have been anxious to see the flights, but with a straight flight of only a few hundred feet, people thought they had not seen enough for their money. Any flight is wonderful but the public wants a spectacle. Mr Farman fulfilled his side of the agreement as far as the ground permitted and must be of the opinion that interest in aeronautics on this side of the pond is really less than he anticipated.”

The New York Times riposted: “Mr. Farman is a bit ‘difficult’ and overconfident of his ability to steer his way among strangers.” The editorial concluded that it was a case of caveat aviator: “Mr. Farman did not exercise caution in the selection of his managers. Inventors are notoriously incompetent in business matters, and it is not only in the United States that their bright hopes of fortune fail to materialize.” 

Farman remained pragmatic. “I said to myself before I came to America that I was not sure that the people were ready for such an exhibition of mechanical flight in the restricted area that seems a necessary adjunct to charging admission. If for no other reason than that the newspapers here have treated me with such kindness, I am glad the trip was made.” 

Disillusioned, the Farmans headed back to France on August 15. Farman’s Brighton Beach flights were commemorated 30 years later by the painter Alois Fabry as part of a huge mural project inside Brooklyn Borough Hall done for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. Entitled “Brooklyn Past and Present,” the work immediately attracted controversy—for its style and because some people thought it included a depiction of Vladimir Lenin. Dedicated in 1939, the murals were removed in 1946 and have since disappeared. 

The Curtiss-Wright Corporation came into being in 1929 through the merger of companies started by pioneering aviators Glenn Curtiss and the Wright brothers. Within the new company, the Curtiss-Wright airplane division made airplanes while the Wright Aeronautical Corporation focused on engines. By the time of World War II, Curtiss-Wright held more defense contracts than any organization other than vastly larger General Motors and had become something of a bully. It used lobbyists, legislators, friends in high places and its own overzealous salesmen to get what it wanted. It made some adequate but unspectacular airplanes and some big radial engines, but why Curtiss-Wright could punch so far above its weight remains something of a mystery. 

Trouble arrived for Curtiss-Wright in 1943 when its engines became the focus of a congressional investigation led by a senator named Harry S. Truman. The inquiry, launched back in March 1941, was formally known as the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program and it helped propel the obscure politician from Missouri into the vice presidency and eventually the White House. Strangely enough, it also impacted the life of actress Marilyn Monroe—but more about that later.

At the time, the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk was the company’s go-to product. The design was essentially a 1933 radial-engine Curtiss P-36 Hawk fitted with an inline Allison V-12 engine. While not a bad airplane, the P-40 was obsolete by the time the United States entered World War II. Still, it was the best America had at the time. Messerschmitt Me-109s and Mitsubishi A6M Zeros ran rings around it at altitude—the P-40 had just a single-stage supercharger—but it remained an effective ground-attack machine.         

Yet the obsolete P-40 stayed in full production until the end of 1944. Why not ramp up manufacture of the North American P-51 Mustang and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt instead, Truman’s investigative committee asked? But Curtiss liked the easy profit it derived from the simple, proven, utilitarian design, and its attempts to create a successor—the XP-46, XP-60 and XP-62—were uninspired. All were canceled. Curtiss had no aeronautical geniuses like Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson, North American’s Ed Schmued or Republic’s Alexander Kartveli to push it to the forefront. Its best talent was an engineer named Don Berlin, who was held in high regard but never really rose beyond his singular success with the P-40. It is notable that when the British asked North American Aviation to license-build P-40s for the Royal Air Force, the California company said, “Hell, give us three months and the back of an envelope and we’ll design a real fighter for you.” That fighter became the Mustang. 

One new airplane the company had to offer was the SB2C Curtiss Helldiver, but it was an ill-handling, poorly manufactured, aerodynamically misshapen beast loathed by pilots, back seaters and maintainers. It was not a Don Berlin design but was credited to Curtiss engineer Raymond C. Blaylock, who seemed to have stepped out of obscurity long enough to head the Helldiver program and then disappear. (In fact, he ultimately became the vice-president of engineering of Chance Vought. He specialized in missiles and was not involved in the design of the remarkable F8 Crusader.) 

To be fair, it wasn’t all Curtiss’s fault. The Navy ordered the SB2C to succeed the Douglas SBD and demanded that a pair of the Curtiss dive bombers had to fit on a fleet carrier’s elevators while at the same time requiring that the SB2C be faster and longer-ranged than the SBD and carry a heavier load of ordnance. This led to the Helldiver receiving an awkwardly short aft fuselage, a huge vertical tail that nonetheless failed to keep the short-coupled airplane longitudinally stable, and a monster wing to lift all that weight at carrier-approach speeds. When Curtiss put a prototype SB2C model into the MIT wind tunnel in 1939, aerodynamicist Otto Koppen said, “If they built more than one of these, they are crazy.” 

The Helldiver’s poor handling characteristics, structural weaknesses—it tended to shed the aft fuselage and empennage under the stress of arrested carrier landings—and lousy stall characteristics at final-approach speeds caught the Truman Committee’s attention. It didn’t help that Helldiver production had been delayed by nine months while the Navy demanded more than 800 modifications. For many months thereafter, Curtiss failed to produce a single SB2C that the Navy considered usable as a combat aircraft. What particularly griped the Truman Committee was that Curtiss had been spending tens of thousands of government dollars advertising the SB2C to the public as “the world’s deadliest dive bomber,” despite the fact that it had not produced a single usable Helldiver.

There was even a song about the SB2C. It went, “Oh mother, dear mother/Take down the blue star/Replace it with one that is gold/Your son is a Helldiver driver/He’ll never be 30 years old.” The Australians and the British were smart enough to cancel their large orders for the SB2C before more than a few were built.

Initially, Curtiss was to construct the SB2C at a huge new government-funded factory in Buffalo, New York. Then production was shifted to Columbus, Ohio. For months, nothing happened, and rumors began circulating among the sidelined workers in Columbus that their efforts were being literally sabotaged. Nobody realized that the problem was the fact that Curtiss hadn’t been able to produce a single successful airplane in Buffalo. 

Nevertheless, the U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF) ordered thousands of Helldivers as a variant called the A-25 Shrike dive bomber. Big mistake. The Germans had already learned, with the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka, that terrestrial dive bombing worked only if the bombers had total air superiority and were attacking targets undefended by anti-aircraft guns. That kind of situation was rare enough that Allied air forces had abandoned the concept of dedicated dive bombers by the time the A-25 was ready for delivery.   

Things were bad enough with Curtiss airplanes. They were even worse for the engines being produced by the Wright Aeronautical Corporation. Several Army inspectors stationed at Wright’s engine factory at Lockland, Ohio, told Truman that they were being encouraged to ignore proper inspection procedures and to approve faulty materials and even entire engines being delivered to the government for use in the Helldiver and various other aircraft. That engine was the 1,600-hp Wright R-2600 Twin Cyclone. 

The R-2600 was the engine that goaded Pratt & Whitney into designing and producing the R-2800, the best radial of World War II, but the big Wright was an excellent engine itself—when it was built right. It powered thousands of North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers, including those that flew America’s first offensive strike against Japan—the April 1942 Doolittle Raid. 

A preliminary investigation by Truman’s staff revealed that there were ample grounds for the whistleblowers’ claims, and that the inspection failings were obvious enough that company execs and Army inspectors should have been aware of the problems.

Well, let’s not be hasty here, the Army said. We’ll look into this and report back. Brig. Gen. Bennett Meyers and his staff did so, and Meyers announced that the Army could find nothing amiss. Meyers either lied or had been duped by his own inspectors, whom the Truman Committee later found to be actively obstructing the investigation. 

The engine division blamed the snitching on “petty bickering over privileges, authority and rights.” The Truman Committee, however, soon uncovered evidence of false tests of R-2600s and the materials that went into them, destruction of records, improper reporting of test results, forged inspection reports, off-the-cuff oral alteration of the tolerances allowed for parts, outright skipping of inspections and, in general, letting Wright’s engine-production needs override the recommendations of both company and Army inspectors. 

There almost certainly had been crashes and deaths caused by the failure of faulty Wright R-2600s, but nobody could identify any specific examples outside the mass of wartime catastrophes attributable to everything from thunderstorms to pilot error. Truman himself said, “The facts are that [Wright was] turning out phony engines, and I have no doubt that a lot of kids in training planes were killed as a result.” The fact that no 1,600-hp Wright Twin Cyclone had ever powered a trainer escaped his attention, but never mind.

As is often the case in such relationships, a culture had grown that encouraged Army inspectors to believe their primary duty was toward Wright rather than the AAF, and that keeping their jobs depended on keeping the company happy. If an Army inspector refused to accept material that he knew was faulty, he got a reputation as a knucklehead who failed to “get along.” Failing to get along meant you risked anything from an inconvenient job transfer to outright losing that job. When one Army inspector produced an honest report on conditions at the Lockland factory, he was immediately prohibited from entering any Wright plant. 

Testimony to the Truman Committee revealed that whenever an Army inspector tried to reject suspect engine material, a Wright exec would insist that the material was “important to the company.” If Wright appealed an inspector’s decision—to the inspector’s supervisor, to an AAF technical advisor, to the Army’s Wright Field itself—the appeal was invariably allowed. Inevitably, Army inspectors came to realize that objections were futile if Wright Aero disagreed.

Wright denied Army inspectors access to the company’s own precision instruments for their inspections, meaning they were limited to purely visual examinations. If they couldn’t see a crack, it didn’t exist. Wright’s excuse was that the Army inspectors weren’t properly trained in the use of the equipment. This was particularly true, the company said, for a device used to test the hardness of the gears in the R-2600’s drivetrain. It became an open secret that Wright was faking the hardness testing of these gears. The military inspectors were also denied the use of rejection stamps or embossing warnings to identify failed parts or engines, since Wright wanted to sell those wares to unsuspecting commercial and export operators. 

More than a quarter of the R-2600s built at Lockland failed a basic three-hour test run. Randomly selected engines were also put through a 150-hour quality test, but the Truman Committee found that since 1941 not a single engine had completed the test. One of them failed at 28 hours. 

Truman claimed to have personally rejected 400 ready-to-ship Lockland engines. “They were putting defective motors in planes, and the generals couldn’t seem to find anything wrong [with them],” he said. “So we went down, myself and a couple of senators, and we condemned 400 or 500 of those engines. And I sent a couple of generals who had been approving those engines to Leavenworth.” (Fort Leavenworth was the Army stockade in Kansas.)

Wright company inspectors often weren’t the problem. The AAF’s own people too often wanted to go along to get along. Chief Inspector Lt. Col. Frank Greulich tried to intimidate and discredit witnesses who gave negative testimony to the Truman Committee, and Greulich himself lied to the committee a number of times. As one observer put it, “The Committee witnessed the unpleasant spectacle of a lieutenant colonel, a major and several high civilian officials all telling entirely contradictory stories.”     

Once the Truman people had finished their investigation, the AAF insisted on repeating their work, inevitably making the same negative findings. But those faults led the AAF to a different conclusion: that the record of engines built at Lockland compared favorably with the record of other types of engines built elsewhere. The best they could say of Curtiss-Wright’s products was that “they were not always the best [but] have been usable.” 

One thing became readily apparent. The Lockland scandal was a prime example of what happened when a huge government-built, spare-no-expense factory tried to turn out an enormous quantity of material with inexperienced management and impossible production schedules while maintaining quality in the face of constant changes in tolerances and specifications.

Middle management was so overextended by the sudden wartime demands that a lot of the execs were simply incompetent, the workers inadequately trained and experienced engineers and supervisors too few. The more plants the government built for Curtiss-Wright, the more diluted the cadre of qualified and talented managerial personnel became. Only two percent of the first batch of applicants for jobs at Curtiss-Wright’s new plant in Columbus, Ohio, had any experience in aircraft production, yet they would soon be building Curtiss SB2C Helldivers, which had been described as the most complex single-engine design of its time. The Lockland plant was the biggest single-story industrial facility in the world, but its inept management soon turned the sleek new factory into a cluttered, crowded, ill-lit dump. One AAF report called it “a disgrace to the company and to the Air Forces.” 

It was thought at the time, at least by some, that Curtiss-Wright was untouchable because its president, Guy Vaughn, was a big-time player on Capitol Hill. Vaughn was a former automobile racer and speed-record holder who had come up through the ranks at Wright Aero. He was responsible, at least in part, for the development of one of the most important aircraft engines ever built, the Wright J-series Whirlwind. Particularly in its nine-cylinder J-5 form, the Whirlwind was the first reliable, bulletproof aircraft engine available. It was so reliable, in fact, that Charles Lindbergh chose it for his 1927 transatlantic flight, and it never missed a beat. (In truth, though, engineer Charles Lawrance did the heavy lifting and designing for the Whirlwind.)

Vaughn griped that the problems the Truman Committee claimed to be finding were simply “standard and recognized manufacturing and inspection procedures.” During his cross-examination by the committee, Vaughn demanded to know exactly what was wrong with three specific R-2600s that had been crated and ready to ship before being rejected by inspectors. It turned out that one of them lacked a lockwire on a gear, another had corroded cylinders, and the third had a driveshaft gear with a broken tooth and an inoperative magneto—defects that could have led to crashes. Vaughn huffed that he didn’t consider these engines to be defective. 

In the end, the Truman Committee toned down its report and Curtiss-Wright ended up suffering no penalty. This despite the fact that the Lockland plant had plainly turned out defective engines with the cooperation of dishonest AAF and company inspectors, and that some of those engines almost certainly went on to kill pilots and crewmen. The Justice Department did sue Wright and eight of its executives for selling the government known defective aircraft and engines, but the suit was never pursued. Three Army Air Force officers, including Greulich, did end up at Leavenworth, however, after being court-martialed for neglect of duty. (Despite Truman’s claim, none of them were generals.)         

The Truman Committee also concluded that Curtiss-Wright had received “far more contracts from the Army and Navy than warranted by the quality of its products or its ability to produce them.” The committee recommended that all Curtiss-Wright contracts be renegotiated, but this never happened either. 

However, the committee’s investigation marked the beginning of the end for Curtiss-Wright, a company that had once manufactured and sold more different aircraft, engines, propellers, accessories and parts than anybody else in the industry. Curtiss-Wright had become good at cranking out quantity, but less adept at creating quality. It continued to build second-best P-40s, concentrating on increasing the production rate, lowering costs and maximizing the profit. 

By 1947, with war profiteering a distant memory, Curtiss-Wright shut down 16 of its 19 plants. The company’s only possible moneymaking program was an attempt to turn the Curtiss C-46 Commando cargo plane into a pressurized airliner. But C-46s were so cheaply available as surplus that operators were buying and refitting the airplanes themselves. (And none saw the need for pressurization.)           

The CW-32 was to be a four-engine airliner with military airlift capability, but the project was canceled in 1948. The company was testing an all-weather jet interceptor, the XP-87, but when an expensive wing modification appeared necessary, the U.S. Air Force insisted that Curtiss pay a major part of the expense. CEO Guy Vaughn refused, and the Air Force retaliated by canceling the project. 

After 40 years, Curtiss was out of the airplane business.

Chaos took over the company’s front office as the focus shifted to profit-taking at the expense of R&D. As the excellent book Curtiss-Wright: Greatness and Decline puts it, “A vigorous and well-planned course of action was desperately needed. This, in turn, required a high degree of managerial skill and perhaps a bit of luck. Curtiss-Wright, it seemed, lacked both.” The leadership that took over Curtiss-Wright “came from the world of corporate finance and investment banking,” the book notes, “and had almost no direct connection with, or understanding of, the aviation industry.” By the mid-1950s, Curtiss-Wright “no longer had a distinct identity. The company had no viable product to develop and sell, and overdiversification was dissipating its resources.” 

Today the Curtiss-Wright Corporation has its headquarters in North Carolina and manufactures components for aircraft, but the days when the company dominated the U.S. aviation industry ended long ago. 

In 1944, Harry Truman became Franklin D. Roosevelt’s running mate and advanced to the vice presidency after FDR’s reelection to a fourth term. Some say he was chosen to shut him up, others that it was a reward for years of chasing down fraud, waste and abuse in the defense industry. (This part of Truman’s career is detailed in Steve Drummond’s excellent new book The Watchdog: How the Truman Committee Battled Corruption and Helped Win World War Two.) Truman became president only months later, when Roosevelt died  suddenly  in April 1945. 

Marilyn Monroe is perhaps the most unlikely person to have had her life changed by the Curtiss-Wright catastrophe. That’s due to a young American playwright, Arthur Miller, who would later write Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and other classics. But in 1944 he had written a play that flopped after only three performances on Broadway. He decided that if that was the best he could do, he’d take up accounting, or selling insurance. Fortunately, he decided to give playwriting one more try. 

In January 1947, Miller’s play All My Sons opened on Broadway, became a huge success and launched his career. Based directly on the Curtiss-Wright scandal, the play told the story of a man who knowingly produced bogus aircraft parts. One batch of his parts—badly cast cylinder heads—resulted in the crashes of 21 P-40s, including one that killed his own son.

In an odd but fascinating mismatch, the now-celebrated Miller fell for actress and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe. Monroe herself sought escape from her dumb-blonde image, and marriage to a successful playwright and intellectual like Miller, she felt, was her ticket to legitimacy. They wed in 1956 but the marriage, like Curtiss-Wright’s dominance of the U.S. aviation industry, soon came to an end.

But for Curtiss-Wright’s fall from grace, it never would have happened.

Jean Boulet’s first helicopter flight was almost his last.

It was September 21, 1947, and the 26-year-old Boulet was at the Camden, New Jersey, headquarters of Helicopter Air Transport, the world’s first commercial helicopter operator. He had earned an engineering degree from the École Polytechnique in Paris and had been a member of the French air force during World War II. After the liberation of France, the air force sent Boulet to the United States for fighter pilot training. He returned to France in 1946, but the war had ended and “there were many pilots and not enough planes,” Boulet told the author in an interview in the 1980s. “I didn’t think there was too much of a future for someone who had not flown during the war, so I left the air force.” 

Despite the glut of former military pilots on the market and his relative lack of experience in the air, Boulet remained determined to make flying his career. “I started looking for civilian flying jobs and received a proposal from SNCASE [Société Nationale des Constructions Aéronautique du Sud-Est] which was just beginning to develop helicopters,” he said. “I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to do the job because I couldn’t fly helicopters, but they said nobody knew anything about flying them.”         

SNCASE sent Boulet to Helicopter Air Transport, which also ran a training program for pilots, and that’s how he ended up in New Jersey and in the copilot seat of a Sikorsky S-51. 

“The first day I saw a helicopter, I had my first ride and my first accident,” Boulet recalled. “The instructor did not have a lot of experience, and at the end of the flight the helicopter started to rock back and forth very quickly. I thought he was doing a nice demonstration of the helicopter’s agility, but he had really lost control. We crashed, rolled over, the blades were broken, the aircraft was a mess, but luckily, we were only shaken up a little. This experience gave me a mistrust of this very strange flying machine.” 

Despite this rather dramatic and nearly catastrophic introduction to the helicopter, Boulet would soon become the primary helicopter test pilot for SNCASE, which later became Sud Aviation and then the helicopter division of Aérospatiale. As these companies grew into one of the world’s leading helicopter manufacturers, Boulet was at the controls for test flights of the SE-3101, Alouette I, II and III, Frelon, Super Frelon, Lama and Puma helicopters. He helped define the role of helicopter test pilots in the development of new aircraft. “We suggest and request modifications and we decide the way a helicopter must be flown,” he said. “We request things such as an increase in power, which we did for the Alouette II.” 

Boulet also set the world’s record for helicopter altitude three times. His third record-setting altitude flight almost ended in disaster after the engine of his Lama flamed out during a descent through a thick layer of clouds. As he always did, Boulet managed to find a way to survive.

After the crash landing in New Jersey, Boulet was able to fly 10 hours in another Helicopter Air Transport helicopter before the company went bankrupt and ceased operations. He completed his helicopter pilot training in Scotland and returned to France and SNCASE, which was ready to test fly its first helicopter, the SE-3101, in June 1948. The SE-3101 was an experimental helicopter designed by German aviation pioneer Henrich Focke of Focke-Wulf fame. An updated version of the Focke-Achgelis Fa 223, it had twin tail rotors, an uncovered fuselage and was powered by an 85-horsepower Mathis engine. After months of tie-down tests, the helicopter was ready for its first flight.

Another pilot, who had experience with autogiros, was going to make the first test flight. He was a bit heavier than Boulet and the underpowered aircraft was unable to lift off the ground. “So, the manager told me to try because I was lighter,” Boulet said. “I was young and thin and was able to take off and hold it off the ground.” This was “the first helicopter to be flown in France after the end of the war,” said Charles Marchetti in Vertical Flight: The Age of the Helicopter, a book published by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in 1984. Marchetti was a chief engineer and the Aérospatiale helicopter division general manager. 

The SE-3101 flew a total of about 20 hours over the next two years but did not go into production due to several stability and control problems. It was able to achieve “satisfactory” forward flight without too much instability or vibration, according to Marchetti, but “during hovering and approach or forward flight near the ground the instability of the aircraft became obvious.”

The company’s first production helicopter was the SE-3130 Alouette II, which was also the first production helicopter with a gas-turbine engine instead of the more conventional piston-driven engine. The first flight took place on March 12, 1955, with Boulet at the controls. “[W]e had a few problems to solve, but we were able to solve them by working very hard because we knew we had to catch up with the American industry which had started production in 1944,” he said. Eventually the company manufactured more than 1,300 SE-3130s. 

Boulet was SNCASE’s only test pilot in 1955, which was problematic. “The company said you cannot be the only one because if you are ill, we cannot fly,” Boulet said. “So, we engaged more pilots, three or four in 1956 and 1957.” The number of test pilots grew over the next few decades. “When I was chief test pilot, I always had control and would not do things I did not think were safe,” Boulet said. “And when the other pilots flew, I always signed the flight order. I only lost one pilot. He was doing a demo flight in Germany and ran into a cable. It was the only bad accident we had. We had some crashes, but not any other bad crashes.” 

Boulet first attempted to break the helicopter altitude record on June 6, 1955, in the Alouette II, just three months after the aircraft’s first flight. The existing record was 24,524 feet, set by U.S. Army warrant officer Billy Wester in a Sikorsky S-59. 

The higher a helicopter ascends into the thin air at high altitudes, the more difficult it becomes for the engine to maintain power and the rotor blades to maintain lift. Yet Boulet said the flight, during which he reached a record 26,932 feet, “was not very difficult.” This is an example of his modesty, as the flight was, in fact, quite difficult indeed. 

He took off from the Buc airfield, about 10 miles southwest of Paris. “I just had to apply the pitch and climb,” he said. “But there was a problem with cockpit icing and I couldn’t see too well. Then, when I started to descend, I had a flame-out and couldn’t restart the engine.” Boulet was forced to autorotate, a technique where the pilot disengages the main rotor from the engine so the blades can be rotated by aerodynamic forces only, without any mechanical assistance. Autorotation will slow a descent but won’t stop it. “There was a strong wind that took me very far from the field I took off from, but I was able to land.” Boulet’s record was broken in December 1957 when U.S. Army captain James Bowman reached 30,335 feet in a Cessna YH-41 Seneca helicopter.

On June 13, 1958, Boulet began heading skyward in another Alouette II, determined to regain the helicopter altitude record for Sud Aviation and France. He climbed quickly when “suddenly I heard a loud bang and the engine stopped,” he said. Once again, he had to autorotate. “When I landed, we discovered that the casing of the engine had broken completely in two.” Despite the broken engine, Boulet had reached 36,027 feet and reclaimed the altitude record.

In the meantime, SNCASE merged with SNCASO (Société Nationale des Constructions Aéronautique du Sud-Ouest) to form Sud Aviation, and Marchetti began designing the larger, seven-seat Alouette III. The helicopter made its first flight on February 28, 1959. Boulet was at the controls and flight engineer Robert Malus was also aboard. Marchetti reported that the new helicopter flew beautifully and that Boulet managed to land a fully loaded Alouette III on top of France’s Mont Blanc, an altitude of 15,777 feet. “In November 1960, on the occasion of a presentation in India, he landed with a passenger and 250 kilograms (551 pounds) of cargo in the Himalayas at an altitude of 6,004 meters (19,698 feet). At that time, this was an unprecedented feat.”

Sud Aviation’s next aircraft was the Frelon, which was the forerunner of the more successful SE321 Super Frelon. A long list of problems was discovered in the early test flights of the Frelon, Boulet reported. “This helicopter had three engines which was something very new for us and we had a lot of problems, with incidents on almost every test flight. Once we had a severe instability with the helicopter. I was just about to tell the crew to jump out, but then I was able to gain control at the very last minute.” 

On another test flight, problems with faulty servocontrols almost caused a crash. “It was not possible to hold the stick because it was moving completely to the left, and I could not pull it back, no matter how hard I tried,” Boulet said. “Finally, with the help of my copilot, I was able to pull the stick back and gain control. This was not a very fun test program, and the crew was always tense during test flights.” 

Test flights for the Super Frelon began in December 1962 and were a lot more successful than those for the Frelon. With Boulet at the controls, the Super Frelon set a new speed record for helicopters of 350 kilometers an hour (217.5 miles per hour).

To meet the French army’s new requirement for a medium-sized, all-weather helicopter, Sud Aviation began developing what would become the SA 330 Puma. The prototype made its first flight on April 15, 1965. As usual, Boulet was flying and, of course, there were problems, as there are in the initial test flights of almost every prototype aircraft. There were a lot of vibrations “that made it very unpleasant for the pilot and crew,” Boulet said. It didn’t really make it harder to fly, but it was difficult to see the instruments because of all the shaking.” 

Marchetti and his team solved the shaking problem by developing a suspension system that isolated the gearbox from the rest of the aircraft. It was called the “barbeque system” because the structure resembled a barbeque grill. Sud Aviation ended up manufacturing about 685 Puma helicopters.           

In 1970 Sud-Aviation became Aérospatiale and in quick succession designed three new, single-turbine helicopters: the Gazelle, Écureuil and Dauphin. The Gazelle had two unique features: fiberglass rotor blades and the Fenestron design in which the anti-torque tail rotor was surrounded by a circle of material instead of being completely exposed. Boulet especially appreciated the Fenestron, which he referred to as “the fan-in-fin tail rotor.” “I had a bad experience at the beginning of the Alouette II test program,” he said. “I was at the controls with the aircraft on the ground, and a man who was not noticed by the mechanics walked head-first into the tail rotor. It was horrible and there was blood everywhere and pieces everywhere. I was traumatized by this and lived in fear that it could happen again. Because of this, I loved the Fenestron and worked very hard to make it successful.” 

Boulet was not as taken with the fiberglass rotor blades that had replaced the traditional metal blades, at least initially. “At high speed we had a lot of flutter, and this, of course, meant a lot of vibration,” he said of the early test flights with the composite blades. “This [vibration] was so bad that I thought the helicopter was going to break into pieces. The stick was moving all over the cockpit, but happily, after a few seconds, I was able to recover with the help of the copilot.” 

Aérospatiale’s SA 315B Lama was a redesigned and more powerful version of the Alouette II that was intended to fly at high altitudes and in hot temperatures for the Indian army. It was first manufactured in 1971 and Boulet decided this was the perfect helicopter in which to set a new altitude record. To make that possible, it was necessary to lighten the aircraft by removing all possible instruments, taking out the passenger seats and replacing the standard fuel tank with a smaller one. Engineers modified the turbine Turbomeca engine to increase power by about 6 percent. After Boulet started the engine, mechanics removed the battery and starter motor to further lighten the aircraft.  

Boulet and the Lama leaped into the air on June 21, 1972, from an airfield near Marseille. Trouble started almost immediately. “During the climb, there were some clouds, but I was able to climb through a hole in them,” he said. “But all the time I was worried about my descent.” 

Boulet was able to reach the stunning altitude of 40,820 feet and smash the previous record of 36,027 feet he had set in 1958. However, his worries on the way up proved prescient on the way down when Boulet couldn’t find the hole in the clouds for his descent. “My cockpit was completely frozen, and visibility was very bad. And also, there was some mist on the ground, which made it very hard to see the ground and tell how high up I was.” 

As if these weren’t enough problems, as he began to descend through the clouds, his engine failed. Without the generator and battery, which had been removed, he had no way to restart the engine. This meant Boulet would have to perform the world’s highest and most dangerous autorotation, without the help of the horizon indicator and compass, which had also been removed. “So, I had to go through 13,000 feet of clouds without instruments,” Boulet said. “The only way for me not to go upside down was to watch for the brightness of the sun. I could barely see where the sun was by looking for the bright spot in the clouds, and I tried to keep this spot above me.” 

Using every bit of the experience he had gained over the years, Boulet managed to keep his helicopter upright. After he broke through the clouds, the warmer air below melted the ice from his cockpit and windshield so Boulet was finally able to see where he and the Lama were going. He landed safely after a descent of about 25 minutes. 

This was Boulet’s third and final helicopter altitude record, and it has yet to be broken. 

Boulet remained Aérospatiale’s chief test pilot until he retired in 1975, ending one of the most illustrious careers of any helicopter or fixed-wing test pilot. “The rest of us were like members of the orchestra, which Boulet was the star soloist who could take your breath away,” said Claude Picard, a helicopter pilot and a member of Aérospatiale’s public relations department.

“I loved my job; it was the only thing I wanted to be doing, and I did everything possible to reduce the risks,” Boulet said, adding that there were times when he was frightened. “I remember a few times when I was scared, especially in the days of the Frelon. I put on some warm clothes because when you are scared, you are shivering.” There were also a few perks available to the chief test pilot that helped compensate for the occasional terror. Boulet said that he often flew a helicopter he was testing to his nearby home to have lunch with his wife. And, from time to time, he was able to “borrow” a helicopter for a weekend of skiing. “This was because in France at that time we had very liberal civil aviation regulations and you could go anywhere provided you had permission of the owner,” he said. 

In the years after he retired, Boulet kept busy skiing, lecturing and writing. He also wrote History of the Helicopter as Told by Its Pioneers 1907-1956, which he published in 1984. Boulet died on February 13, 2011. He was 90. 

Commandos on Wings” ran the headline of the article in Washington’s Evening Star on November 1, 1942. The subhead read, “They are Uncle Sam’s glider troops, who drop silently out of the sky, seize airfields, blow up bridges and ammunition dumps.” The article included a quote from Brig. Gen. James Doolittle, hero of his eponymous air raid on Japan the previous April. “Don’t forget the boys without motors,” he said. “They will be the spearhead of future Airborne attacks.” 

Yet a decade later the U.S. Army removed gliders from its arsenal. They had been rendered obsolete by the evolution of the helicopter. Helicopters, not gliders, were the spearhead of future airborne attacks.  

The combat life of the military glider was a short but adventurous one. Germany pioneered the use of gliders in warfare and was the first to deploy them in combat, using 41 gliders to capture Belgium’s Eben-Emael fortress on May 10, 1940, along with three bridges over the Albert Canal the fort protected. The Allies were impressed enough to initiate their own glider program. In the ensuing five years the Allies used gliders in some of the most famous operations of the war, including the invasions of Sicily, France and Germany. The engineless craft also served in the challenging terrain of the Burmese jungle.

However, their contributions, as well as the bravery of the men who piloted the craft and those who trained as glider infantry, have not received the recognition they deserve. “It has just been overlooked,” reflected Flight Officer George E. Buckley of the 434th Troop Carrier Group, 74th Troop Carrier Squadron, in a 2007 documentary entitled Silent Wings. “People never heard of them. People to this day, that were old enough during World War II to know about things, say, ‘Gliders? I didn’t know they used gliders.’”     

America came late to the concept of airborne warfare. It wasn’t until May 1, 1939, that the U.S. chief of staff, General George C. Marshall, sent a memo to Maj. Gen. George Lynch, his chief of infantry, entitled “Air Infantry.” Lynch’s instructions were “to make a study for the purpose of determining the desirability of organizing, training, and conducting tests of a small detachment of air infantry with a view to ascertaining whether or not our Army should contain a unit or units of this nature.” 

Lynch replied swiftly and positively, concluding that air infantry had practicable uses, but other priorities sidelined the project until after war in Europe erupted in September 1939. In January 1940 Marshall made the development of an air infantry a priority, and to lead its formation and development he assigned Major William C. Lee, a veteran of World War I. Today Lee is referred to as the “Father of the American Airborne,” and it is said that when the 101st Airborne Division jumped into Normandy in the early hours of June 6, 1944, they did so with a yell of “Bill Lee.” But Lee was also influential in the evolution of America’s military glider.

In his seminal book Paratrooper!, Gerard Devlin—an airborne veteran of Korea and Vietnam—wrote that for Lee the glider “represented a means of delivering troop reinforcements and supplies to his parachute troops once they had landed in remote areas. Equally important, the glider was an aerial vehicle for the delivery of large caliber weapons and light wheeled vehicles.” 

The first step toward reaching that goal was to select a manufacturer from the several prototypes that were being tested at Wright Field in Ohio. The model chosen was the Waco CG-4A  glider, which was 49 feet in length and had a wingspan of 84 feet. Its load-carrying capacity was 4,000 pounds, which equated to two pilots and 13 combat soldiers.

Actual gliders weren’t available until October 1942, so in the interim the recruits in the glider training program had to improvise. Larry Kubale was a newly qualified flight officer when he volunteered for gliders in the middle of 1942. “At that point they didn’t have anything other than sail planes,” he recalled. “Cargo gliders weren’t even invented at that point. After about seven weeks of that stuff, I was an instructor in sail planes, and had about sixteen students in four classes.” 

The pilots underwent glider training at one of three centers in Missouri, Nebraska and North Carolina, and by the end of the war 10,000 of them had qualified. The 88th Infantry Airborne Battalion became the United States’ first glider infantry unit in May 1942. Later designated the 88th Glider Infantry Regiment, it was the first of 11 such regiments that served in the war. It wasn’t a volunteer system. Soldiers were assigned to glider regiments and, to their chagrin, they didn’t get the $50 dollars a month extra pay that paratroopers received on account of their hazardous duty. There were other resentments. “We weren’t even allowed jump boots,” recalled Ernest Platz of the 327th Glider Infantry, 101st Airborne Division. “It was a point of honor that the glider men could not use parachute jump boots.” 

The glider men finally received their jump boots when they were shipped overseas, and in time they earned the respect of the paratroopers as well. “I talked with the paratroopers,” said Platz. “They would never go into combat under the gliders because if there’s a plane that was hit, they had a chance to get out by their parachute. But if we were hit, that was it. You had no way, except to crash land. So we got a little respect from them.” Eventually, in July 1944, after representations had been made to Congress, the glider men began receiving the same pay as the  paratroopers did. 

By that time the glider men had proved their courage and effectiveness.

The Allies’ first major glider operation of the war was codenamed Ladbroke. It was an Anglo-American mission launched on the night of July 9-10, 1943. The destination was the eastern coast of Sicily, where 1,600 men of the 1st Airlanding Brigade were to land ahead of the main invasion force and seize several key objectives, including the Ponte Grande bridge just outside Syracuse.

A total of 144 gliders, 136 of them CG-4As, took off from Tunisia, towed by C-47 Dakota tug planes of the American 51st Troop Carrier Wing as well a handful of RAF Albemarle bombers.

The glider pilots were all British. One of them was Staff Sgt. Alec Waldron of the 1st Battalion Glider Pilot Regiment. To his consternation, Waldron found himself behind the controls of an American Waco CG-4A, known to the British as the CG-4 Hadrian. Waldron had trained on a British Airspeed Horsa. “The Hadrian glider was quite a different aircraft to the Horsa,” he reflected. “It had a lower wing loading, carried about half the load—15 people—had a flat angle of approach, lift spoilers, small flaps and was certainly not ideal from a military point of view.” For the Ladbroke operation, the gliders would cast off at pre-determined heights and simply “glide in more or less dead stick to the landing zones.”

Waldron feared the operation “would be a disaster,” and he was right. In many respects it was doomed from the outset. The crews of the C-47s were inadequately trained and, in some cases, of inferior quality to the airmen assigned to bomber and fighter squadrons. It was a similar story for British glider pilots with virtually no experience of night flying and little opportunity to familiarize themselves with the CG-4A glider. 

As the aerial armada sighted Sicily, the glider tugs began ascending to 6,000 feet, the release altitude for the gliders. Simultaneously vessels of the Allied invasion force spotted them and opened fire in the belief they were Axis aircraft. Confusion, panic and inexperience resulted in most of the glider pilots cutting themselves loose prematurely. Ninety of the 144 gliders crashed into the sea south of Sicily, and hundreds of men drowned.

Waldron’s glider came down in the sea about 400 yards from the shore, enabling the soldiers inside his craft to swim to the beach. “I couldn’t swim,” he said. “I floated on a wing…they were machine-gunning us down a searchlight beam and I got a ricochet through my thigh.” 

After Waldron spent about seven hours in the water an Allied vessel picked him up and transported him to a hospital in Malta.  

Paul Gale from Brooklyn was a navigator in one of the C-47s and recalled that none of the crews had been trained properly for such a hazardous night mission. Their instructions were to release the gliders 3,000 yards from the shore but, he reflected, “How the devil do you know when you are 3,000 yards from shore at night without any instrumentation?” Nor were there Pathfinders ashore to light up the landing zones. “There is no fixed point of reference,” he said. “You can see the shoreline maybe, but we had never had any practice.” 

Nonetheless 12 gliders did land close to the target, with 83 British soldiers, enough to seize the Ponte Grande bridge.

Overall, however, and certainly in terms of lives lost, the Sicilian operation was a failure, a result of inexperience and a poor chain of command. But in March 1944 another Anglo-American glider operation provided an audacious example of how gliders could transport special forces behind enemy lines. 

The Chindits were a British unit raised in 1942 by the unorthodox general Orde Wingate. His second-in-command was Michael Calvert, nicknamed “Mad Mike.” The first Chindits operation was a long-range reconnaissance patrol behind Japanese lines in Burma in early 1943. A year later their task was to carry out guerrilla raids against the enemy in Northern Burma to support General Joseph Stilwell’s major offensive there. The Chindits would use CG-4A gliders towed by C-47s of Colonel Phil Cochran’s 1st Air Commando Group to penetrate deep into the Burmese jungle. Sixty-two gliders took off from Lalaghat on March 5 and 35 of them covered the 400 miles to the target. Calvert was aboard one of the gliders and recalled the moment the tow line was cut. “The Dakota’s engines faded away and a tremendous silence enveloped us, weird and frightening after the sound of the familiar and comforting machinery that had carried us through the air,” he wrote. He glanced at the glider pilot, a gum-chewing American named Lees, “who sat relaxed as if driving a Cadillac on a wide American motorway.” 

Three hundred and fifty Chindits landed safely, along with a bulldozer brought in to clear the landing strip of glider detritus. Over the next few days Dakota troop carriers made scores of landings, bringing in 9,000 men, 1,500 mules and 250 tons of equipment. Wingate issued an order of the day in which he declared the Chindits “are inside the enemy’s guts.” Calvert concurred. “Thanks to the Air Force boys we were, indeed, inside the enemy’s guts and it was now up to us to start giving him a stomach-ache.” 

The British and Americans heeded the costly errors of Operation Ladbroke in Sicily as they planned for Operation Overlord, the invasion of northern France in early 1944. Tug and glider pilots received more thorough training, and the wings and fuselage of the gliders were painted in black and white stripes so Allied naval gunners could identify them.

In addition to the nearly 300 CG-4A gliders available for Overlord, there were more than 500 British Horsa gliders, which could carry two pilots and 30 fully equipped troops. The plywood Horsa was also considered more maneuverable on account of its large “barn-door” flaps that made it easier for pilots to execute steep descents onto smaller landing zones. The Horsa had a tricycle undercarriage for takeoff. Once airborne, the pilot would jettison the wheels and use a sprung skid under the fuselage for landing. It had a hinged nose to make loading and unloading of cargo easier, as well as a reinforced floor and double nose wheels to support vehicle weight. Despite the improvements over the CG-4As, the British gave their Horsa a nickname: the “silent coffin.” 

The landing precision of the Horsa was brilliantly demonstrated at 16 minutes past midnight on June 6 when Major John Howard and 180 men of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry glided to earth beside two small bridges over the River Orne (Ranville Bridge) and Caen Canal (Bénouville Bridge) in Normandy. The operation was codenamed “Deadstick” and beforehand its pilots had practiced landings in southern England. One thing they concluded was that 28—not 30—soldiers was the correct payload capacity based on each fully-equipped man weighing 240 pounds.

One factor was left to luck: the number and location of the Nazis’ anti-glider obstacles, dubbed “Rommel’s Asparagus.” These were thick poles sunk into the ground at intervals of 15 to 40 feet and intended to spear unfortunate gliders.

Howard was in the lead glider, which was piloted by Staff Sgt. Jim Wallwork. At seven minutes past midnight, Wallwork released the nylon towline from the tug aircraft. For the next seven minutes he piloted the glider down from 6,000 feet to just over 500, reducing the airspeed as he did so from 160 mph to 110 mph. As he approached the landing zone, Wallwork shouted over his shoulder to the men sitting in rows along both sides of the fuselage. “Brace!” The 28 soldiers linked arms and raised their legs to reduce the risk of breaking them during the landing. “The look on his face was one that one could never forget,” said Howard of Wallwork as the glider came in to land. “I could see those damn great footballs of sweat across his forehead and all over his face.” 

When the glider hit French soil it was more a crash than a landing. The soldiers crawled out of the glider just 30 yards from Bénouville Bridge. Lieutenant Den Brotheridge was shot dead at the head of his men, the first Allied fatality of D-Day, but within 10 minutes the target had been secured.  

Late on D-Day, after tens of thousands of Allied soldiers had landed in Normandy by parachute or landing craft, gliders were used en masse to resupply the troops fighting to secure the beachhead. Nearly 250 gliders came down on two landing zones near Caen to reinforce the British Airborne Division, while to the west 176 gliders, part of Operation Elmira, descended inland from Utah Beach, a couple of miles south of the village of Sainte-Mère-Église, onto a landing zone just over a mile in length and 500 meters wide that covered both the 82nd and 101st Airborne sectors. 

Most of the gliders—140—were Horsas and one of the pilots was Larry Kubale. In his glider was a jeep, a trailer loaded with munitions and ten men. “They figured that fifty percent of us wouldn’t make France, and of the fifty that made it half of them would be coming back after it was over,” he recalled.

Kubale’s glider came down in a field but careered on until it hit some trees. The impact sheared off the wings and catapulted the copilot out of the aircraft. “The guy flying with us, he went right through the nose of the glider,” remembered Kubale. “He had the control in his hands…and he went right through the nose, the steering column in his hands and foot still on the rudder.” The copilot suffered a broken leg.

Kubale’s work was far from over. Having helped bring in the reinforcements, he now became one of them in the field. “The guys that I had with me, they were actually paratroopers, with the 101st Airborne, so I was with them for about four or five days,” he said. By the time it was over, Operation Elmira resupplied the American Airborne with 1,190 troops, 67 jeeps and 24 howitzers. Casualties, compared to the Sicily operation, were light, with 157 troops killed or wounded, and 26 of the 352 pilots killed or injured. 

There were other significant Allied glider operations in 1944, in southern France and in the Netherlands. In France, more than 400 Horsa and CG-4A gliders were used for Operation Dragoon on August 15, landing some 20 miles inland to prevent the Germans from disrupting the landings. The Holland action was part of Operation Market Garden, intended to establish a bridgehead over the lower Rhine at Arnhem and open a pathway into Northern Germany. Despite the support by gliders, which transported more than 14,000 troops as well as weapons and supplies, the operation failed. The last mass use of gliders was for Operation Varsity on March 24, 1945, when the American 17th Airborne Division and the British 6th used more than 900 gliders to pass over the Rhine into Germany. Overall, 21,680 paratroopers and glider men landed on a total of 10 zones in 1,696 jump planes and 1,346 gliders.

Among the U.S. regiments participating in Varsity was the 194th Glider Infantry Regiment, whose instructions were to land just north of Wesel and seize the crossing over the Issel River. The ground fire was murderous as they approached the landing zones; twelve C-47 tug aircraft were shot down just after releasing their gliders and another 140 were damaged to varying degrees. Nineteen-year-old John J. Schumacher was in one of the gliders. He was in a double tow—two gliders  behind a single C-47—with his jeep and his passenger. He remembered terrible turbulence cause by four traffic lines of aircraft, and something else. “There was an unusual sound as you went along that it took a little while to figure out what it was, but it sounded like popcorn,” he remembered. “It was bullets and shrapnel going through the wings of the glider…pop, pop, pop.” 

As they neared the landing zone the glider pilots were presented with a new problem—poor visibility caused by crashed and burning aircraft plus a smoke screen laid down by the British. Nonetheless, Schumacher’s glider pilots managed to get the craft down in one piece and then helped him lift up the tail and get the nose lowered enough so they could open it and release the jeep.

Another glider used in Operation Varsity was the General Aircraft GL.49 Hamilcar. Intro-duced on D-Day, it was the biggest craft of its kind that the Allies deployed during the war. It had a wingspan of 110 feet and a length of 68 feet and could carry a payload of 36,000 pounds, which meant it could carry either two Bren Gun Carriers or one small Tetrarch tank. The Hamilcar was never again used in combat after Operation Varsity.

In 1946 gliders began to be phased out of the American military. Their contribution to the war effort faded from memory, unlike that of the more glamorous and gung-ho paratroopers. “It’s aggravating,” admitted George Buckley in the Silent Wings documentary. “And that is another reason I like to collect glider stuff and let people know about it.” 

Glider pilots were a small and skilled band of brothers, whose perilous existence cultivated not only a camaraderie but also a sardonic humor, encapsulated by one of their favorite songs, “The Glider Riders.” Sung to the tune of “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze,” one of its verses ran:             

We glide through the air in a tactical state,

Jumping is useless, it’s always too late,

No ’chute for the soldier who rides in a crate,

And the pay is exactly the same.

If you ask me, World War II’s coolest airplane is the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. It looks like something a kid might have doodled in a notebook while daydreaming in class. I became enthralled with the airplane in junior high when I read a book by Martin Caidin called Fork-tailed Devil: The P-38. I also made the Revell model kit of the Lightning flown by Richard Bong, America’s highest-scoring ace with 40 victories. I believed then that the P-38 was the war’s greatest fighter, but the more I read, the more I realized that the North American P-51 Mustang probably made a bigger impact. The P-38 was a much more complicated beast, and it experienced all sorts of mechanical issues in both theaters of the war, while the single-engine Mustang proved to be a relatively trouble-free “Big Friend” to American bombers over Europe.

In the Spring 2024 issue of World War II we told the story of a P-38 pilot, Laurence Elroy “Scrappy” Blumer, who flew in the European Theater. While the Lightning did perform valuable service there, it really made its reputation in the Pacific, where, among other things, P-38 pilots flew one of the most amazing missions of the war. On April 18, 1943, 16 Lightnings of the 339th Fighter Squadron under the command of Major John W. Mitchell flew out of Guadalcanal to shoot down Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the mastermind behind the Pearl Harbor attack. They knew where to find the admiral because the United States had cracked a coded Japanese message that detailed his plans. And find him they did, after Mitchell led them on a circuitous 600-mile course over the ocean, guided only by his wristwatch, a newly installed navy compass, and dead reckoning. Amazingly, they arrived just as Yamamoto was descending over Bougainville Island to land in his Mitsubishi G4M1 “Betty” bomber on an adjoining island. (The deteriorating wreckage of the admiral’s Betty still lies in the jungle on Bougainville.)

Two pilots, Tom Lanphier and his wingman, Rex Barber, were later awarded a half credit each for the admiral’s Betty, but Lanphier publicly claimed he was the pilot who alone shot down Yamamoto’s airplane. Barber later came to believe that he deserved sole credit. When Barber contested the credit allocation in 1991 before a U.S. Air Force board, I wrote a magazine article about the mission and the ensuing controversy. I got to meet and interview Barber and Mitchell (Lanphier had died in 1987) and I did phone interviews with all the other surviving members of the mission, known as Operation Vengeance. It was quite a thrill to talk to these men and hear their personal recollections of this historic incident. I came to believe that Barber was probably correct, but the board decreed that there just wasn’t enough evidence to change anything after the passage of so many years. To this day Barber and Lanphier share the credit for shooting down Yamamoto.

I still treasure the memories of interacting with these men who had become part of history. I also treasure P-38 Lightning, a book I own by writer Jeffrey L. Ethell and illustrator Rikyu Watanabe. It’s a beautiful volume, with lots of foldout illustrations of the airplane, but my copy is special because it includes an inscription and signature by John Mitchell himself. I think that’s pretty cool—just like the P-38. 

“I never imagined I was going to be doing this when we launched,” said Captain Earl Ehrhart of U.S. Marine attack squadron VMA-231 (“Ace of Spades”) aboard the Marine landing ship Bataan (LHD-5). The vessel’s crew had been looking forward to the end of their deployment when Hamas made its mass incursion from Gaza into Israel on October 7, 2023, slaughtering about 1,200 civilians and kidnapping 253.

With that, Bataan’s deployment was extended and the ship dispatched to the eastern Mediterranean while Israel Defense Forces launched a draconian counterattack into Gaza. Shortly afterward, Houthi rebels, a Yemeni militant group armed by Iran, began launching Iranian-produced Shahed (“witness”) 136 explosive drones at every cargo ship they regarded as being owned or associated with Israel or the United States that entered the Red Sea via the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. (However, on February 12, 2024, the militants targeted Star Iris, a Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier full of corn bound for Iran, for all intents and purposes making the Houthis’ show of solidarity with the Palestinian refugees in Gaza a declaration of war against the world.) In reaction, the Bataan transferred to the Red Sea to use its AV-8B Harrier II vertical-takeoff-and-landing fighter-bombers in defense of the endangered merchantmen.

For Earl Ehrhart V in particular, things were about to get controversial. In a BBC interview on February 12, 2024, Ehrhart stated that since December 2023 he had personally destroyed seven drones before they could strike. “The Houthis were launching a lot of suicide attack drones,” he said. “We took a Harrier jet and modified it for air defense. We loaded it up with missiles and that way, we were able to respond to their drone attacks.” Ehrhart’s claim of seven Shaheds revived a debate of sorts that has been going on since World War I: should this kind of aerial victory be equal to the downing of a manned airplane? And if so, does downing more than five of them make Earl Ehrhart the first American ace since 1972?

Although the Harrier’s primary mission involves ground attack and troop support, its British predecessor, the British Aerospace Sea Harrier, had demonstrated its air-to-air capabilities during the 1982 Falklands War, shooting down at least 20 Argentine fighter-bombers without loss. This astounding kill-to-loss ratio was primarily due to the Argentines’ lack of an airbase between their home bases and the Falkland Islands, depriving them of the loiter time to engage the British fighters and limiting their options to attacking the British ships before hightailing it for home. Being remotely controlled unmanned aircraft, the Shahed-136s were likewise unable to fight back against intercepting fighters and had the added handicap of a maximum speed of 115 mph. They also cost only $20,000 apiece and could be produced in great numbers and dispatched en masse. To deal with them, Ehrhart and his VMA-231 colleagues were often guided to their targets by the radar of accompanying warships and attacked the drones with AIM-120 AMRAAMs (advanced medium range air-to-air missiles) or AIM-9M Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles. In spite of the inherent disparity between a piloted fighter and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the low altitudes at which the UAVs could fly over the water could make them difficult targets for the Sidewinders. The more sophisticated AMRAAM was far more likely to score a hit, but at a monetary cost many times that of a Shahed. (The AV-8B could also carry a 25mm GAU-12/U Equalizer automatic cannon and 300 rounds.)

Airplanes have been shooting down other airplanes since 1914, and by 1916 lighter-than-air craft, such as kite balloons and Zeppelin airships, were added to the “fair game” menu. By observing the front and directing artillery fire, balloons became tactically viable targets. Attacking one could be dangerous, too—they may have lacked their own armament, but they were encircled by anti-aircraft guns and located far behind enemy lines. The Zeppelins bombing British cities were armed, although they relied more on high-altitude climbing to escape interception.

Another aspect of air-to-air combat that was generally settled upon was that a victory scored by more than one airplane would be shared by all involved and go down as a whole victory in each pilot’s logbook. The main exceptions to this were the Germans, who generally stuck to one pilot, one victory, while British policy on the matter followed an inconsistent course. Also during World War I, a victory scored by a two-seater reconnaissance plane or bomber would be shared between the pilot and his observer, who was usually manning a machine gun or two of his own.

While one-on-one combat ending in a crash or an adversary in flames makes exciting fodder for the movies, a high percentage of “kills” in aerial combat were “moral victories” involving an enemy going down OOC (out of control) or being FTL (forced to land). More aircraft since World War I were “shot up” than “shot down,” but still counted in good faith as a victory. Postwar access to enemy records usually reveals that their real losses were only a fraction of what their adversaries had reported. Aces with complete matches to their claims have always been exceptions to the rule, known examples being Americans Douglas Campbell (six in World War I) and Steve Ritchie (five over Vietnam) and North Vietnamese aces Nguyen Tien Sam (five) and Nguyen Duc Soat (six).

By World War II the warplane had matured considerably, and single combat had largely given way to sprawling air battles, which added a few more variations to the tallying process. Some, like Britain, the United States and Finland, logged each pilot’s victory in fractions if more than one were involved in a shoot-down. As Allied bombing raids became an increasing threat to the Axis war effort, Germany, Romania and Bulgaria introduced a point system to encourage their fighters to brave the huge bomber wings. Pilots received one point for a single-engine airplane, two for twin-engines and three for four or more. Many fighter pilots from those three air arms kept tally of separate scores, realizing that the point system was a way to get medals but also likely to invite post-war skepticism over claims.

UAVs first appeared in the form of the German Vergeltungswaffe (“vengeance weapon”) V-1 against British cities in June 1944. The V-1’s debut led to the question of its status as an aircraft. These “divers” or “doodlebugs” were a serious menace to life and industry and had to be eliminated, and they also presented intercepting Allied fighter pilots with the threat of serious damage or destruction if they exploded in their faces. A safer prospect of eliminating the V-1 was for the pursuer to slip a wingtip under the enemy’s and raise it to upset the gyro-based guidance system, causing the V-1 to crash in a relatively less vulnerable open area. In spite of the special challenges the V-1 presented, the Royal Air Force chose to put multiple-scoring “diver aces” into a category separate from those who downed manned aircraft.

The United States used AQM-34 jet-powered reconnaissance drones over Vietnam, and North Vietnamese fighter pilots sometimes intercepted these swift, elusive little targets—and sometimes, while chasing them over the hilly terrain, crashed in the process. Many North Vietnamese counted the destruction of drones in their scores, including two by their nine-victory ace of aces, Nguyen Van Coc. The Americans at that time were not inclined to count them as such and U.S. Air Force ace Steve Ritchie made his own opinion known in an interview: “I don’t count robots.”

Since the Vietnam War, however, advances in technology have brought a new generation of UAVs into play, guided by operators thousands of miles away. The possibility of dueling drones dogfighting for local control of the sky while being flown from office chairs in faraway control centers is no longer science fiction, which seems to be what the USAF had in mind in 2017 when it revised its criteria for air-to-air combat: “The Air Force may award an aerial victory credit to an Air Force pilot or crew that destroys an in-flight enemy aerial vehicle, manned or not, armed or not.”

Which brings us full circle to 2024, in which, according to the USAF, Nguyen Van Coc retains his place as Vietnam’s ace of aces and Captain Earl Ehrhart V, USMC, credited with seven Shahed-136 attack drones, rates as the latest American ace.

In its June 8, 1953, issue, Life magazine included a full-page spread with four blurry images of a North Korean Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 getting shot down over Korea. They were taken by the wing-mounted movie camera of a U.S. Air Force F-86E Sabre as it engaged the enemy jet near the Yalu River on May 14. The grainy black-and-white photos depict the crippled MiG after it was hit by a burst from the Sabre’s six .50-caliber machine guns. They show the jet in flight, followed by a bright flash as an explosive charge propels the pilot and his ejection seat away from the doomed aircraft.

The 23-year-old American aviator who scored the victory and took the images was a recent West Point graduate who had arrived in Korea just six months earlier. It was his first victory as a combat pilot and the photospread in Life gave him his first moment in the spotlight. It was not his last. 

The pilot was Lieutenant Edwin E. Aldrin—better known to the world today as Buzz. He would rocket to fame more than a decade later as a space-walking astronaut with Gemini 12 and then again a few years later as the second man to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission.

However, in 1953, Aldrin was relishing his first air-to-air victory—even if it was lacking in thrills. His quarry hadn’t realized there was an American in the sky, never mind on his tail. 

“It was a singularly undramatic experience: no dogfight, no maneuvers, no excitement. I simply flew up behind the enemy and shot him down,” Aldrin wrote in his 1973 autobiography Return to Earth. 

The real excitement came a few weeks later when the photos appeared in Life. Aldrin flew with the 51st Fighter Interceptor Wing, which was in constant competition with its rival 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing. “That was a real coup over those glory boys of the 4th,” he said in his 1989 book, Men from Earth. Aldrin also earned a Distinguished Flying Cross for the kill.

At the time, Aldrin was just coming into his own as a fighter pilot, using skills that appear to have been something of a family tradition. He had been born in New Jersey on January 20, 1930. His father, Edwin Eugene “Gene” Aldrin Sr., became a U.S. Army aviator after World War I and was an officer in the Army Air Forces during World War II. Between the wars Aldrin Sr. had once served under air power pioneer William “Billy” Mitchell. He retired as a colonel from the Air Force Reserve in 1956.

Aldrin Sr. also had an interest in space and in 1915 he had studied rocketry at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, under the guidance of Robert H. Goddard, inventor of the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket. He later served as consultant to the manned space flight safety director of NASA, where he would cross paths with his son. He died in 1974.

Aldrin Jr. pursued his own dream of flying by graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1951 (the U.S. Air Force Academy was not established until 1954). He later earned a doctorate in astronautics from MIT, where his father had received a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering in 1918. 

Fresh out of West Point, young “Buzz” (the nickname came from the way a sister mispronounced the word “brother”; Aldrin made it his legal name in 1988) found himself on the way to Korea. The “police action” there had United Nations forces, including the United States, defending South Korea after the communist North (backed by China and the Soviet Union) invaded on June 25, 1950. In Korea, Aldrin demonstrated a proficiency as a jet pilot that helped him become mission leader in just a few months. “You always started as a wingman to get experience and see how things work,” says Michael Napier, an RAF fighter pilot in the Gulf War and author of Korean Air War: Sabres, MiGs and Meteors, 1950–53. “Aldrin was a very impressive pilot and always looking for opportunities. From what little I know about his character, he was feisty, too. That’s certainly an advantage in those situations.” Aldrin had one kill under his belt. His second victory would prove to be far more difficult than his first. 

The epic duels between F-86s and MiG-15s locked in soaring, spiraling dogfights have become emblematic of the Korean War. The jets often clashed in large numbers over MiG Alley, the name given by United Nations pilots to the area near the Yalu River, which marks the border between North Korea and China. The two airplanes were similar in appearance, with swept-wing designs and open-nose intakes to provide the air flow necessary for high speeds and high-G maneuvers. 

“Both were top-of-the-line fighters,” says Dr. Michael Hankins, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. “There are little differences here and there in terms of slats and hydraulic controls, but they are pretty evenly matched in a one-on-one dogfight. Overall, the Sabre is a more effective airplane.”

In its day, the MiG-15 was a formidable fighter itself. It reached Korea in November 1950, when the Soviet Union deployed two regiments of the 324th Fighter Aviation Division to aid the overmatched North Korean air force. Featuring the Klimov VK-1 engine, the jet could reach speeds of nearly 700 miles per hour—up to 100 mph faster than American jet fighters like the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, Republic F-84 Thunderjet and Grumman F9F Panther. In Korea, the Soviet swept-wing turbojet aircraft overwhelmed the straight-wing first-generation jets flown by the United States and its United Nations allies—literally flying circles around the now-obsolete airplanes.

In addition, the Soviet jet was heavily armed, with three autocannons: two 23mm NR-23s and a single 37mm N-37. Intended as a means to destroy the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the MiG-15’s weapons could be equally devastating—if not more so—on fighter aircraft. The explosive rounds packed a wallop but at the expense of a slower fire rate and limited ammunition reserves on the plane. The two firing systems offered another disadvantage, too. The two smaller-bore cannons were on the left side of the fuselage while the big gun was on the right, meaning a pilot had to be aware of what gun he was using to aim correctly. 

The jet’s superiority was quickly challenged in December 1950 when the United States rushed three F-86 squadrons to counter the MiG-15 threat. Built by North American, the Sabre featured the General Electric J47-GE-7 jet engine through late 1953. That engine produced 5,200 pounds of thrust with a top speed of 687 mph—a close match with the MiG-15. However, the F-86 could reach only 45,000 feet, about 5,000 feet below the Soviet-built jet’s ceiling. This gave enemy pilots momentum during an attack, as well as the element of surprise when they dove on American aircraft. The MiG-15 could make tighter turns, but the F-86 could descend faster, an advantage in a downward spiraling dogfight.

The Sabre’s six Browning .50-caliber machine guns featured a fast rate of fire—about 1,500 rounds per minute, which was more than adequate to inflict serious damage on an enemy plane. Though not as powerful as cannons, the F-86’s weapons were aided by a computerized aiming system that automatically determined the target’s range. Guided by radar, the A-1CM gunsight proved a game changer by providing highly accurate firing and impressive kill statistics. By the end of the war, the U.S. scrapped the machine guns and added four 20mm cannons to the F-86H. The future of American fighter aviation would be based on variants of this weapon as faster and more technologically advanced jets were introduced over the years.

The Sabre and Mig-15 clashed for the first time over Korea on December 17, 1950. Flying an F-86A, Lt. Col. Bruce H. Hinton of the Air Force shot down a MiG-15 in that showdown. By war’s end, Sabres scored 757 victories in head-to-head matchups against the enemy aircraft while losing only 103 encounters.   

While Aldrin was pleased to get his first victory, the celebration was decidedly low-key. “There were no celebrations awaiting me as there would have been in all previous wars,” Aldrin recalled. “I didn’t even get to paint a MiG on the nose of my aircraft—I had no aircraft of my own; I flew whatever was available. That night I bought drinks for several of my friends and that was that.” The return to war so soon after World War II likely dampened celebratory spirits, as did the threat of annihilation by two nervous superpowers equipped with nuclear weapons facing each other through their proxies in Korea.

The dawn of “push-button” warfare may have also had an impact on how pilots viewed success in combat. Advancing technology altered the scope of combat to the point where long-distance attacks with missiles were possible against an enemy that wasn’t even visible. “The Korean War was the first of what historians called the impersonal conflicts,” Aldrin wrote. 

Impersonal or not, Aldrin continued to take to the skies over Korea. On June 7, 1953, he scored his second kill. “If the first MiG was a piece of cake, the second was the hairiest experience I’ve had flying machines in this planet’s atmosphere,” he said. 

On that day, Aldrin’s wingman had to abort due to engine problems shortly after takeoff. The young lieutenant continued on alone, trying to catch up with three other Sabres over MiG Alley. Called Tiger Flight, this unit of the 39th Fighter Interceptor Squadron flew the more advanced and faster F-86Fs. Aldrin was piloting a slower F-86E and had a hard time keeping up with the American jets.

The leader of Tiger Flight spotted a MiG airfield and descended to attack. Aldrin jettisoned his spare tanks and followed. He knew he couldn’t catch the other Sabres but didn’t want to be left behind. As he descended, his jet began to shake and roll as he approached Mach 1—“a forbidden speed for the Sabre,” he recalled. Just as the other pilots leveled off at 5,000 feet, Aldrin was surprised to see another aircraft suddenly banking off his right wing. He caught sight of the plane’s tail and recognized it as a MiG-15. Aldrin throttled back and activated his speed brakes so he could get behind the enemy jet.      

The enemy pilot had spotted Aldrin’s aircraft at the same time. He turned into the American, who then realized he was going to overshoot the MiG and wind up with the enemy on his tail. Aldrin made a hard right turn to get on the bogie’s left side. The pair of combatants repeated the maneuver several times as they hurtled toward the earth. “Fighter pilots call this a scissors, the two opposing aircraft crossing like blades of a broken scissors,” Aldrin said. “Cross and cross again, with each pilot trying to slice the sky more sharply than his enemy.” 

Aldrin saw the ground rushing up at him as the two airplanes continued to cross paths during their descent. The contest became a game of chicken as each pilot waited for the other to pull out of the dive. The enemy pilot broke first. Aldrin quickly jumped behind him and tried to line up the MiG in his gunsight, only to discover that the high-G turns had jammed the aiming device. If he was going to score this victory, Aldrin would have to do it on his own. Using the nose of his Sabre as a gunsight, the young lieutenant fired a quick burst and saw the spark of a tracer striking the wing of the enemy jet. Aldrin then throttled up and chased the MiG into a steep right turn, where he had a clear shot. “I fired and the bright tracers jumped along his wing from the root to the tip,” he recalled. “Smoke shredded back toward me. He rolled out of the turn and pitched over in a shallow dive. I gave him two more bursts. His nose came up and he started to stall out.” Aldrin saw the MiG’s canopy pop off and then a bright flash from the ejection charge. Still in his seat, the pilot blasted away from his stricken jet with an “implausible” red scarf trailing behind him. As Aldrin soared past, he couldn’t see if the parachute deployed or not. 

As thrilled as he was with the kill, Aldrin knew he had to be careful about what he said when he got back to base. He had been flying north of the Yalu River and over China at the time—an area where U.N. pilots were technically forbidden to venture. “The reason for the rule was pretty clear,” the Smithsonian’s Michael Hankins says. “Everybody was worried about starting World War III, especially with nuclear weapons in play. We didn’t want to see any more involvement by the Chinese—or even the Russians for that matter.” 

Still, U.N. pilots often ignored the directive. “It seems that crossing the Yalu and pursuing MiGs into a technically forbidden area was not uncommon,” Hankins says. “A lot of pilots were doing that. There was kind of a nod and a wink when they were told, ‘Don’t go over the Yalu, but we all know you’re going to.’” 

Still, Aldrin was reluctant to admit where he shot down the MiG-15. If discovered that he was over China at the time, he would have been denied credit for the air-to-air victory. Fortunately, his secret was safe. “[T]here was no way to tell from the gun camera film what side of the river I’d been on, so the Air Force gave me an oak leaf cluster to go with the Distinguished Flying Cross I’d gotten for the first MiG,” Aldrin wrote. “This time I’d earned it.” 

It is not clear who flew the two aircraft Aldrin shot down. At that stage of the war, North Korean and Chinese pilots were both flying MiG-15s. Chinese jets often sported North Korean markings, possibly to make U.N. pilots believe the North Korean air force was stronger than it was. In addition, Soviet pilots were secretly flying missions during the war, also in North Korean jets. They would even don North Korean uniforms to fool U.N. pilots during flybys. The U.S. military was aware that Soviets were present because of Russian chatter on the radio, yet neither side would publicly acknowledge the reality of the situation.

Perhaps the surest indicator of who was flying an enemy plane was the capability of the pilot. North Koreans were poorly trained and not as adept at air combat. Chinese pilots were better because they were trained by the Soviets. The best pilots were usually Russian since they had the most experience. Aldrin’s adversary had certainly demonstrated some skillful piloting, so it’s possible he was a Soviet pilot.

Aldrin finished his tour in Korea in December 1953 after the armistice had been signed. He had flown 66 combat missions. As a flight commander, he later flew F-100 Super Sabres equipped with nuclear weapons while stationed in West Germany. He then went back to school and earned a doctoral degree in astronautics from MIT in 1963, which opened the door for him to join NASA and the space program. In 1966, Aldrin and Jim Lovell rocketed into space on Gemini 12, a mission on which Aldrin made headlines again for a successful five-hour spacewalk—the longest on record at that point. Three years later, he was catapulted to worldwide fame when he joined Neil Armstrong for a stroll along the lunar surface during the historic Apollo 11 mission, an event viewed on television by an estimated 650 million people around the world.

Aldrin left NASA in 1971 and returned to the Air Force, retiring as a colonel in 1972. He received an honorary promotion to brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force in May 2023. In addition to his Distinguished Flying Cross and an Oak Leaf Cluster, Aldrin has an Air Force Distinguished Service Medal and Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster in lieu of a second DSM, three Air Medals, a Congressional Gold Medal, Presidential Medal of Freedom and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, as well as many other honors and awards. At 93, Aldrin remains a strong advocate for space exploration, especially a manned mission to Mars. He has even proposed a special trajectory for such an expedition, using the gravity of Earth and Mars to send spacecraft to and from the planets. The procedure is known today as the Aldrin Cycler.

While exploring the dusty surface of Earth’s closest neighbor, Aldrin and Armstrong unveiled a plaque symbolizing the overall goal of the mission. Affixed to one of the legs of the lunar lander, the stainless-steel sign reads: “We came in peace for all mankind.” That was a stark contrast to his experience in Korea, where his objective was to stop communist aggression at all costs. In reality, though, both situations remained consistent with his overall mission in life. Talking to an interviewer in 2016, Aldrin said, “At age 17 at West Point, I took an oath to serve my country, and that has been the overriding purpose in all of my activities since then.”

So you’ve had a “fender bender” in your plane and are in need of some wings. What do you do? 

You could rent a plane from the local flight school. But at a cost of $155 per hour (whether the propeller is turning or not) that is simply not practical. Can you borrow a plane? Perhaps, but after someone learns why your plane is in the shop they might not be so keen on handing over the keys to their bird. You could bum rides from friends. Sure, but they may not stay friends for long. Or you could give up flying until your plane is repaired and use the time to work on your golf game. Never!

That leaves just one option: Buy a second plane.

The challenge is that planes are notoriously poor investments—in most cases they are either way overpriced or in such poor condition that the cost of making them airworthy makes them unaffordable. Finding a plane you can both afford and actually fly as soon as you’re handed the keys takes some luck, and a strategy. 

I wanted a basic machine, nothing fancy—a simple Cessna or Piper—something for day trips to the islands or Cape. It didn’t need to go fast. It didn’t need to be all-weather. It just needed to be reliable.

So my search began where all searches begin: the internet. But like all internet searches, frustration quickly set in. My search ran up against the reality that lots of people are looking for the same plane, particularly flight schools and new owners. Such planes, being in high demand, command a hefty premium in price. Not only that, but such planes also tend to be very high time (read: worn out), and thus more trouble than they’re worth.

I needed to change my approach. After a couple of dead ends, I found an area of aviation where one can still find a simple, affordable aircraft: Vintage planes. The plane I generally fly is 60 years old, so by vintage I mean planes that are really old, almost antique. These are planes built not long after the dawn of aviation; planes that are covered in cloth rather than metal; planes manufactured by companies long out of business…the Taylorcrafts, the Luscombes, the Aeroncas, the Stinsons and the Swifts. 

And what I landed upon surprised me: the Ercoupe, a twin-tail, tricycle gear, metal and cloth hybrid that was way ahead of its time when it was designed in the mid-1930s. Back then, the Ercoupe seemed poised to do for aviation what the Model T did for the automobile. 

In 1935, less than a decade after Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis, aviation had—to use a bad pun—taken off. Airline traffic in the United States was doubling every year, carrying more than 900,000 passengers (compared to more than 853 million passengers per year today). Each year saw a proliferation of new airlines, new airplane manufacturers, new records being made or broken and exploding interest in aviation. 

In all this heady optimism, the Department of Commerce sought to bring airplane ownership within reach of ordinary citizens. Under the auspices of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the forerunner of NASA, it challenged engineers to develop a machine that inexperienced pilots could operate, at a price much less than conventional airplanes.

From this emerged the Ercoupe, a name derived by the name of the company that produced it, Engineering and Research Corporation (ERCO). Designed by legendary aeronautical engineer Fred Weick, the Ercoupe incorporated a number of features that made the plane simpler and safer to fly. This included tricycle landing gear, which made the plane much easier to take off and land than its tail-dragging cousins. The plane’s twin tails were designed to be outside the propeller wash, which alleviated unwanted yaw movements on takeoff and at slow speeds. The bubble canopy gave the pilot unmatched visibility. The fuel-air mixture was fixed, so there was no mixture control. There were no flaps. Elevator deflection was limited, making stalls nearly impossible. And, most importantly, the plane’s flight controls were integrated—the rudders were linked to the ailerons. That meant no rudder pedals, which also meant all turns were coordinated. Because of this, the Ercoupe was the first plane to be certified as “characteristically incapable of spinning,” and every plane has a placard on the control panel stating as much. On the ground, the nose-wheel was also linked to the control yoke, so the plane steered like a car.    

ERCO marketed the Ercoupe as “the world’s safest plane,” one as easy to operate as the family car. In 1945, the sticker price was $2,665. A Buick sedan, by comparison, sold for $1995. In another first, you could buy an Ercoupe in a department store. Macy’s took out a full-page ad in The New York Times in 1945 to herald the opening of its airplane department. At Hamburger’s in Newark, New Jersey, elevator operators hollered, “Sixth floor, airplanes!” Aviation was going retail.

But the dream of “an airplane in every garage” never materialized. Though safer and easier to fly than conventional planes, the reality is that the Ercoupe still requires airmanship—not to mention a license—to fly. And that includes knowledge of weather, aviation regulations, navigation and aeronautics. The average American wasn’t quite ready for this. Sales stalled. In 1950, ERCO sold the rights to the Ercoupe to the Forney Aircraft Company. Fred Weick moved on to Piper Aircraft, where he later designed the venerable Piper Cherokee, one of the most popular airplanes of all time. A succession of companies made Ercoupes up until 1967—a total of 5,685 in all—an exceptionally long run for a general aviation aircraft. Of those, more than 2,000 are estimated to still be flying. 

A well-maintained Ercoupe still costs less than a compact sedan. The plane I found was born in 1946. When I first laid eyes on it, I thought it looked like an MG with wings. It was painted in the silver-and-yellow WWII Army Air Corps trainer scheme. Very sharp.

Thing is, the only Ercoupes to actually serve in the military were a pair bought by the Army in 1941 that were evaluated for use in observation and later used as target drones. The government used another Ercoupe to test jet-assisted take-off (JATO), in which a short-burst rocket was strapped to the fuselage for a high-powered take-off.

So the plane’s military paint scheme was a bit of a fraud, but that’s okay because—having never served in the military—so am I. After getting it home, I placed a series of mosquito stickers along the side of the plane that attest to my “confirmed kills.” 

The man who sold it to me is a Navy veteran and retired Boeing 747 captain. He told me Pan Am used the Ercoupe to train its early crews in how to land in a crab. The conventional technique of banking the plane and applying opposite rudder to stay on the runway centerline wouldn’t work with the giant 747 because the outboard engines could scrape the pavement if the wings weren’t level.

“The technique was to fly in the crab, and at 50 feet above the runway the flight engineer would call ‘50 feet’ reading the radar altimeter and the pilot would bring the nose around with rudder to straighten it out and reduce side loads on the main gear,” he told me. “Worked well! Thank you Ercoupe for the help!”

My insurance company required me to get an instructor’s sign-off before covering me for solo flight. My instructor, a young guy who flies for a major airline, had never heard of an Ercoupe. When I told him it had no rudder pedals, he sounded perplexed. “How do you land it?” he asked. “We’ll figure it out,” I said. 

The plane, we discovered, is an absolute cinch to fly. Flip the battery switch, turn on the magnetos and just pull the starter. With the carburetor wired, there’s no fuel mixture to adjust. Gas from the plane’s two wing tanks is gravity fed to the engine, so there’s no tank selector. Just “drive” the plane out to the runway, line it up, push in the throttle and when the plane hits 65 miles per hour lift it off the runway. 

You’re not going to go very far or go very fast with a cruising speed of around 95 miles per hour. And if there’s a stiff headwind you may find that cars on the highway below are passing you. But with the windows down and the wind in your hair you get the feeling that this is the way flying was meant to be…that “slipped the surly bonds of earth” sort of thing. More than anything, it is just fun.

Want to check out some basic aeronautics? Stick your arm out the window and hold it in the wind. Watch the nose drop and the plane begin to turn (this is actually an approved technique for making a rapid descent). Put the plane into a steep turn and you’ll get the feeling there’s nothing between you and the ground. Circle over Gillette Stadium and it will be like you’re on a string spinning over it. 

But the best part of it is bringing it home. Given all my experience and training, I thought that landing sideways onto the runway would make for a hair-raising, jarring arrival. Not so. The trailing-link gear gently cushions the landing and the plane naturally pivots in the direction of flight, straightening out for a smooth, effortless landing.

 “How can you tell when you’re on the ground?” my brother asked when I took him up for a flight. 

I wish all my landings could be like that.

Tom LeCompte is a freelance writer, airplane owner and longtime pilot based south of Boston. When not writing or researching stories, he’s airborne somewhere. This article originally appeared on his blog, nineronepop.blogspot.com.

On November 8, 2023, collector Charles Hack paid more than $2 million for a postage stamp. It was not just any stamp—it was an example of the famous “inverted Jenny” issue from 1918. The stamps were intended to celebrate the start of airmail service in the United States, but the Curtiss JN-4 Jenny was accidentally printed upside down on some of the sheets. One sheet with 100 stamps escaped the postal service’s recall, and those stamps became a holy grail for collectors. Hack, in fact, had previously purchased two, but his most recent acquisition was the only one of the 100 still unaccounted for when it emerged in 2018. It had been stored in a safe-deposit box for a century and was in mint condition. Hack tried to buy it then, but his bid fell short. That wasn’t the case this time.

With the inverted Jenny, it was the mistake, not the airplane, that made the stamp so alluring. But airplane buffs who want to collect stamps featuring airplanes—while spending less than $2 million doing so—will find no shortage of specimens from around the world and featuring a wide variety of airplanes. 

The world’s first postage stamp to feature a flying machine was issued by the United States in January 1913. That 20-cent stamp depicted what appears to be a Wright 1909 military flyer. The stamp was one of a set intended to celebrate the regular delivery of packages to both urban and rural addressees, thus introducing the concept of mail order to American consumers. The stamp bore the inscription “Aeroplane Carrying Mail” five years before the U.S. Postal Service inaugurated official airmail services. 

Outside the United States, many countries have marked the anniversaries of historic aviation events with stamps. These have included the anniversary of the first powered flight of a human-carrying airplane by the Wright brothers, the beginning or end of various world conflicts or the progress of science or engineering that enabled the technology we have today. The countries of origin sometimes seem unconnected to the aircraft or events depicted on the stamps. Some smaller countries expressly issue high volumes of new stamps each year, less for the purpose of carrying their mail than to generate revenue from sales to stamp collectors. However, most have some affiliation through prior colonial or trade links with the country in which the historic event took place, or they commemorate flights or airplanes of worldwide significance, such as Louis Blériot’s pioneering flight across the English Channel in 1909 or Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 New York-to-Paris flight in the Spirit of St. Louis, which has graced stamps from countries as widespread as Nicaragua, Samoa and Niger. 

The examples here demonstrate the wide range of aviation stamps—and they are available at reasonable prices. 

this article first appeared in AVIATION HISTORY magazine

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The Boeing B-17—or its computer-generated likeness—appears front and center in the AppleTV+ series Masters of the Air. The story of the 100th Bombardment Group of the Eighth Air Force in World War II, MOTA is based on the book by Donald L. Miller. The 100th flew the B-17 Flying Fortress and some of its missions over Europe provide harrowing sequences in the series.

Here are a few classic films that feature the B-17 and are worth searching out.

Air Force (1943). Directed by Howard Hawks. Starring John Ridgely, Gig Young, Arthur Kennedy, Charles Drake, Harry Carey, George Tobias and John Garfield.
While B-17s are known primarily for their role in the European Theater, they flew in the Pacific as well. Howard Hawks’ Air Force tells the story of one such Fort, Mary Ann. After flying into the attack on Pearl Harbor, the airplane and its crew proceed to Wake Island and then on to the Philippines to take action against the Japanese. The production used real B-17B, C and D models, supplemented by model work when necessary.

The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944). Directed by William Wyler.
Director William Wyler left Hollywood to document the war for the U.S. and received permission to film an account of a B-17 crew on a mission over Germany. He ended up flying five missions with pilot Robert Morgan of the 91st Bombardment Group, two of them in Morgan’s regular plane, Memphis Belle. Wyler used his footage to create a composite twenty-fifth mission for Morgan and the crew of Memphis Belle. (While not the first bomber to complete 25 missions, Memphis Belle was the first to return to America after having done so and earned much public attention as a result.) Released on April 15, 1944, the New York Times called the film “a perfect example of what can be properly done by competent film reporters to visualize the war for people back home.” (The real Memphis Belle is on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.)

Memphis Belle (1990). Directed by Michael Caton-Jones. Starring Matthew Modine, Eric Stoltz,
Tate Donovan, D.B. Sweeney, Billy Zane, Sean Astin, Harry Connick Jr., John Lithgow and David Strathairn.
The fictionalized film based on Wyler’s (and co-produced by his daughter) also tells the story of the titular B-17’s 25th mission but suffers from a willingness to embrace cliché as the crew faces a familiar litany of threats (bandits, flak, cloud cover, engine loss).

Command Decision (1948).Directed by Sam Wood. Starring Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon, Van Johnson, Brian Donlevy, Charles Bickford, John Hodiak and Edward Arnold.
Where MOTA focuses on what the B-17 crews endured during the war, Command Decision focuses on the commanders who sent them on their missions in what Brigadier General “Casey” Dennis (Gable, who actually flew some missions over Europe) calls “the weirdest kind of war on earth.” Watching B-17s and their crews head out on a mission, he says, “In a few hours from now they’ll be fighting on oxygen five miles above Germany. Tonight some of them will be dancing at the Savoy. Some of them will still be in Germany.” The film can’t escape its roots as a Broadway play (adapted from a novel) and remains mostly set-bound. A scene where Dennis has to talk down a B-17 bombardier flying for his wounded pilot suffers from some obvious model work that stands out in comparison to the actual combat footage used elsewhere.

Twelve O’Clock High (1949). Directed by Henry King. Starring Gregory Peck, Hugh Marlowe, Gary Merrill and Dean Jagger.
Twelve O’Clock High covers some of the same ground as Command Decision but does it much better. The focal point is General Frank Savage (Peck) who takes command of the snakebitten 918th Bombardment Group after its previous commander got too close to his men and efficiency suffered. Savage plans to whip the unit into shape even if it means the crews will hate him. The 918th does improve, but the stresses of command eventually take their toll on Savage. B-17 fans will especially enjoy a legendary stunt sequence when stunt pilot Paul Mantz performs a belly landing in a real Fortress. The film later inspired a television series.

The War Lover (1962). Directed by Philip Leacock. Starring Steve McQueen, Robert Wagner, Shirley Ann Field, Gary Cockrell and Michael Crawford.
This adaptation of John Hersey’s novel tells the story of a pilot (McQueen) and co-pilot (Wagner) of a Flying Fortress and the woman one of them loves (Field). The pilot, “Buzz” Rickson, is the war lover of the tile, a man who treads the “fine line between the hero and the psychopath” in the words of the squadron doctor. Filmed with three actual B-17s (and footage, including Mantz’s belly landing, borrowed from Twelve O’Clock High), the film boasts a strong performance by McQueen but is weakened by the romance in which Field’s character is used to explain the movie’s themes. “You are on the side of life,” she tells Wagner’s character; to Buzz she explains, “You can’t make love.… You can only make hate.”

Target for Today (1944) is also of interest. This wartime documentary provides a detailed nuts-and-bolts look at what it took to plan and fly B-17 missions over Europe. Cast with real military personnel and filmed largely on location, it will provide viewers with some key background for the events of MOTA.

The Cold War was at its coldest in the 1960s, with the United States and the Soviet Union each engaged in massive military buildups to prepare for possible war with the other. Both superpowers wanted to develop production aircraft that had the potential to deliver advanced weapons systems to the enemy. Among many projects, the Soviets wanted to build a new strategic intercontinental bomber capable of supersonic speeds. This interest was, at least in part, due to the awareness that the United States was developing a successor to the Boeing B-52 bomber—the Rockwell B-1 Lancer—that would eventually fill this same role. The Soviets were also alarmed by the United States’ development of the hypersonic North American XB-70 Valkyrie prototype bomber, which first flew in 1964.

Multiple design bureaus submitted proposals for the new Soviet bomber. Some of them looked very similar to the XB-70. Ultimately, the Tupolev design bureau received the assignment to create the new aircraft, which would become Tu-160, known in the West as the Blackjack. Early in the development process, Tupolev realized that wings with variable geometry (swing-wings) would be ideal, and that those wings should be blended into the airframe at their roots. The swing-wings would allow the Tu-160 to maximize its lift/drag ratio during all aspects of its mission, from takeoff, to climb and attack and back to landing. The design of the tail posed significant technical challenges given how thin it needed to be for such a high-speed aircraft. Ultimately Tupolev decided on a cruciform tail with a divided rudder. The aircraft was powered by four Kuznetsov NK-32 turbofan jet engines, each of which could produce 55,000 pounds of thrust in afterburner mode.

In its final form, the Tu-160 looked strikingly similar to the B-1, but the two aircraft have significant differences. Although both have a crew of four, the Tu-160 is much larger, with more than double the wing area and almost twice the thrust of its American counterpart. The Tu-160 has a top speed of just over Mach 2 (similar to that of the original B-1A) while current B-1B models top out at Mach 1.25. The Tu-160 also has a higher rate of climb than the B-1. Critically, the Tu-160’s armament was limited to either twelve Raduga KH-15 or six KH-55 nuclear-capable cruise missiles in each of two internal bays, both on rotating launchers. The B-1, in contrast, has three internal bomb bays and six hardpoints on the wings to allow it to carry a wide array of conventional and nuclear armaments as well as air-launched missiles.

Neither aircraft have stealth capabilities, technology that didn’t exist at the time of their design. Although both aircraft started out with analog instruments, the B-1 has since been updated to a glass cockpit. While many B-1s and almost all Tu-160s were originally painted white (to protect against the flash of a nuclear blast), modern B-1s have a dark blue or dark gray color scheme. It should be noted that the current B-1B functions as a low-level penetrator, which is a different role than that for which the Tu-160 was designed. Overall, the Tu-160 is a faster aircraft with an extended range, but the B-1 is more maneuverable and harder to spot on radar. 

Of note, the Soviets did significant work to make the Tu-160 capable as a platform for air-launching space vehicles to put satellites into orbit, via a system known as Burlak. The idea was that the airplane could be flown to an air base in a country that had requested the service, and there a satellite of up to 850 kilograms could be fitted to a three-stage, liquid propellant launch vehicle. The mating of the rocket to the airplane would be done within the host nation’s borders to avoid the prying eyes of foreign governments. The Tu-160 could then air-launch the combined payload/rocket from altitude into any orbit desired. Despite some interest, the Burlak system appears to have been abandoned before it was ever used. Plans to use the Tu-160 as a launch platform for an aerial drone known as Voron also fell flat.

The Tu-160 formally entered active service in 1987. Before the initial round of production stopped in the 1990s, a total of 37 Tu-160s had been completed, with nine of them serving as test models and the rest as operational aircraft. Critically, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, 19 Tu-160s (and their nuclear armament) became the property of the newly independent nation of Ukraine. While some of the aircraft were repainted in Ukrainian livery, their new owners had little use for them. The Tu-160s were extremely expensive to operate and maintain and the planes sat largely unused at Ukrainian military airfields.

Russia soon found itself in the uncomfortable position of having to buy back its Tu-160s from Ukraine. Extensive negotiations ensued, mostly focusing on price, and by 1999 Ukraine finally agreed to sell back eight Tu-160s to Russia (along with their attendant nuclear-tipped cruise missiles) in exchange for debt relief. The Russians selected the eight aircraft they felt were in the best condition to return to their fleet. Of the remaining eleven Tu-160s in Ukraine, ten were scrapped (including at least one in a public demonstration) as part of the START II disarmament treaty. One Tu-160 was kept as a museum piece.

Interestingly, during the time when the Russians were negotiating to buy back their Tu-160s, there was a brief period where it appeared that three of the aircraft would be sold to an American company, Platforms International Corp., which wanted to use them for a private air-launched satellite venture. The Russians were outraged (and terrified) at the possibility of the planes being transferred to the West and pointed out that such a purchase would itself be a violation of START II. The deal subsequently collapsed. 

The Tu-160 has only seen relatively limited operational use over its lifetime. Mostly used for patrols and as part of military exercises, several aircraft were briefly deployed to Venezuela in 2008 and again in 2013 as part of a show of force, and the planes first saw true combat in 2015 during the Syrian civil war. The aircraft have only been used in a very limited manner in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Recently, some Tu-160s have undergone extensive upgrades and modernization, and a small number of new, upgraded aircraft (so-called Tu-160M models) are being produced again after many years. A living relic of the Cold War, the Tu-160 remains one of the most striking and remarkable bombers ever to roll off an assembly line. 

this article first appeared in AVIATION HISTORY magazine

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The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress has found itself back in the spotlight after the January 26 debut of the AppleTV+ miniseries Masters of the Air. Produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman—who were also behind the series Band of Brothers and The Pacific—and based on the book by Donald L. Miller, the nine-part series tells the story of the 100th Bombardment Group—the “Bloody 100th”—during World War II. The group flew the B-17 , and the big four-engine Boeings should share top billing with human stars Austin Butler, Callum Turner and Barry Keoghan, even if most of the airplanes are the product of computer-generated imagery (CGI), along with three modern replicas. (The series should include a disclaimer that state, “No real B-17s were harmed during the making of this series.”)

The United States produced nearly 13,000 B-17s during the war. Today only 45 remain and only a handful of those are in flying condition. Two have crashed in recent years, the Commemorative Air Force’s Texas Raiders destroyed after an inflight collision with a P-63 Kingcobra at an airshow in 2022 and “Nine-o-Nine,” owned and operated by the Collings Foundation, in 2019.

The B-17 flights in MOTA, as it’s known, are brutal, violent and intense. That’s not at all the experience I had when I got to fly in a B-17 some years ago. I flew in Yankee Lady, the B-17G operated by the Yankee Air Museum of Belleville, Michigan. This B-17 was one of the last built, too late to see combat. It flew for the Coast Guard for a while after the war and then was converted for fire-fighting. The museum received it in 1986, when it needed a complete nine-year restoration before it could return to the air. It was briefly grounded in the spring of 2023 when the Federal Aviation Administration issued an airworthiness directive regarding an issue with wing spars but has resumed flying.

My flight went off without incident. There was no flak, no fighters, no blood, no worries about hypoxia or frostbite, no spent shell casings littering the fuselage interior. But I did experience the ear-pounding noise generated by the four Wright R-1820-97 engines. On the runway they idled with a loud throaty purr, but when the pilot pushed the throttles forward and Yankee Lady began its takeoff run, the entire airplane vibrated to the roar of the engines. I was sitting in the bombardier’s station in the nose of the bomber, watching as the trees as the end of the runway got closer and closer…and then we lifted up and soared over them.

It was a thrill to fly in the venerable Boeing. Maybe I didn’t get a sense of air combat, but I did get a sense of the airplane, which was not nearly as big—at least from the inside—as I expected. I’m sure it felt even more cramped for aircrew wearing bulky heated suits to protect them from the subzero temperatures at altitude.

I’m glad I got my chance to fly in a B-17 but I’m even happier that I didn’t have to experience what their crews did during the war.

Donald L. Miller’s massive book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany came out in 2007 and provided the basis for the new series on AppleTV+. In 2019 Aviation History had contributing editor Stephan Wilkinson look back at the then 12-year-old book in light of the announcement that HBO was going to turn it into a series. Now that the series has begun (but not on HBO), we thought it would be interesting to revisit a review of a book we had already agreed was a classic.

The epic of the Eighth Air Force during World War II is fertile ground thoroughly plowed by aviation historians. A search of Amazon’s e-shelves elicits nearly 200 such books, and several writers have made entire careers of covering the Mighty Eighth.

The best of them all is Donald Miller’s Masters of the Air. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg apparently agree, as they are basing their proposed 10-part HBO project, “The Mighty Eighth,” on this book. If—and that’s a big if—the miniseries comes to fruition, it will be the third in the trio that includes “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific.” No release date has been specified, and filming has not begun.

The Eighth’s bombing campaign has been called the Children’s Crusade, for the crews were made up of young men in their early 20s, even teenagers. The horrors they suffered are incomprehensible to anybody (like me) who hasn’t gone to war.

Some of the most gripping chapters of Miller’s book are those that describe the conditions into which bomber crews were thrust in 1943 and ’44, when B-17s and B-24s were sent into stratospheric winds and temperatures minimally understood by the aeromedical professionals of the time—ill-equipped flight surgeons whose resources dated back to the 1920s. Nor did the vaunted Norden bombsight come anywhere near living up to its PR-stoked reputation, and the minimally trained gunners who supposedly made their aircraft “flying fortresses” might just as well have been firing .50-caliber garden hoses.

Miller’s book is not without minor faults. He believes that contrails are created by an aircraft’s propellers and repeats the myth of the crushed ball-turret gunner who died when his B-17 had to land gear up—a tale traced back to famously creative reporter Andy Rooney. Most are irrelevant except to rivet-counters. The comprehensiveness and well-written grace of this book vastly outweigh them and simply make it plain that nobody knows everything.

The Mitsubishi A6M Zero came as a shock to many in the west. Quick and incredibly maneuverable, it could outfly nearly everything in the sky. The fighter dominated its opponents in China and Burma early in World War II. It’s “introduction” to American airmen came on December 7, 1941, over Pearl Harbor. 

Petty Officer 1st Class Takeshi Hirano was part of the first wave of the Japanese attack, flying in an element of three fighters from the carrier Akagi. After strafing Hickam Field and attacking some of the B-17s trying desperately to land there, Hirano’s Zero was peppered by machine gun fire from the ground.

The pilot struggled to bring his damaged fighter down but clipped a number of trees and crashed into the entrance of Fort Kamehameha’s ordinance machine shop, killing Hirano. His was one of only 29 aircraft brought down during the attack.

This particular Zero would become the object of intense scrutiny by U.S. intelligence officers looking for kinks in the vaunted fighter’s reputation.

The Kit
Tamiya, Inc., produces one of the most accurate scale models of the Mitsubishi A6M2 Type 21. First released in 1973, the 1/48th scale kit still holds up well against some of the higher priced models. It’s an ideal kit for the beginner—simple, well-engineered and easy to build. The more experienced modeler will be tempted to add some extra detail.

Construction starts with building and painting the multipart cockpit, which comes with an optional pilot figure. Using Tamiya cockpit green (XF-71) takes the guesswork out of what to paint the floor, sidewalls and instrument panel. A decal does a good job of reproducing the dials and indicators. The seat is flat aluminum; a belt harness from an aftermarket detail set is a nice touch. (Note: Japanese naval fighters used a single diagonal shoulder strap with a standard lap belt.)

With the cockpit complete, paint the 940-hp Nakajima Sakae Type 12 engine flat aluminum, then use a black wash to bring out the details. Next, glue together the two-piece cowling and paint it with a mixture of semigloss black (FS-27031) and a few drops of cobalt blue to duplicate the cowling color reportedly seen on many WWII Japanese carrier planes. Glue the completed engine into the cowling and set it aside to dry.

Next, join the fuselage parts together. Slip the finished cockpit through the fuselage’s underside, making sure it is seated correctly before applying dabs of glue to hold it in place. Now you can add the completed wing. The fit here is very good, but there is still a small gap at the wing root that will need attention.

For this model we’ll add an extra detail. The type 21 Zero was the first version to have folding wings (more accurately, folding wingtips). It was a new addition meant to help maximize space aboard the carrier. The Czech company Eduard makes a great resin detail set of the folded wingtips. Designed for their own A6M2 Zero kit, it can easily be made to fit the Tamiya kit with a little extra surgery and sanding. It’s a great addition to the model. Cement the horizontal stabilizers in place and set the assembly aside. 

Now that the basic construction is complete, it’s time to check over your work and fill and sand any seams. Most imperfections can be smoothed over with an application of Tamiya’s surface primer.

Camouflage
The A6M2 Zeros that took part in the Pearl Harbor raid were painted Imperial Japanese Navy gray-green overall. This color is available in both a spray can (Tamiya AS-29) or bottle (XF-76). Before painting, stuff facial tissue into the cockpit and wheel wells to protect them from overspray.

The wheel wells and the insides of the main landing gear doors should be painted the same interior metallic blue-green as the cockpit. The landing gear legs are semigloss black, with dark brown “rubber” colored tires and aluminum hubs. The propellers on Pearl Harbor Zeros were unpainted aluminum, with red warning stripes near the tips. The back of the propeller was painted a flat deep brown to reduce glare for the pilot.

The fabric-covered moveable surfaces—ailerons, rudder and horizontal stabilizers—were painted a gray primer. It was thought that the weight of an additional layer of paint would alter the delicate weight and balance and effect performance. Mask off these sections and paint them a slightly darker gray.

After all the painting is complete, apply a coat of gloss varnish to provide a smooth surface for the decals to adhere to.

Bringing the Zero to Life
Hirano’s aircraft had simple, standard markings. The kit markings work well and settle into the nooks and crannies with a little decal softener. The tail number, AI-154, was cobbled together from other Zero decals that were in the “stash.” Add a mild amount of weathering, some soot from the exhaust ports and a bit of fuel and oil staining. That’s all you need. Once the decals are complete, give the fighter a light coat of a clear flat varnish and put it aside.

On to the canopy. There is an option for an enclosed one-piece canopy, but you’ll want to show off that cockpit detail so opt for the three-piece open version. Painting the cockpit canopy frames will be easier if you mask and paint the horizontal ribs first, then the vertical frames. Attach the clear parts with white glue and finish off your model by gluing the landing gear, gear doors, arresting hook and tail wheel into place. Don’t forget the pitot tube and small weights on the top and bottom of each of the ailerons. Last but not least, add that folding wingtip. Takeshi Hirano’s Mitsubishi A6M2 is now ready for its sortie into history. 

The cold blue sky was spattered with red bursts and puffs of anti-aircraft fire on July 7, 1944. Downward streaks of black smoke to our front marked the demise of both Allied and Axis aircraft. Chaos drew closer and closer as our B-24 Liberator hummed onward. From my copilot’s seat, I squinted through the windshield to gauge the approaching whirlwind. Distant German planes were at first no larger than tiny specks whizzing through our advanced formations. Having just kicked the enemy’s nest, we were soon to be engulfed by an angry swarm. 

Moments prior, we had dropped our payload on the morning’s target—a Junkers aircraft plant in Aschersleben, located in the north-central region of Nazi Germany. Our Second Air Division dropped over 200 tons of incendiary and high-explosive bombs on that plant. Ordnance plowed into the factory with devastating impact. On a larger scale, more than 1,100 American heavy bombers took off that morning to strike eleven priority targets throughout the Reich. The assault was the biggest aerial blow since D-Day. 

A voice shouted over the intercom, “Bandits! One o’clock!” 

Rapid flashes of yellow and orange suddenly appeared to our front. In a matter of no time, the enemy was among us.

My mind raced. “Stay focused,” I told myself. “There’s no time to be scared up here. Do your job.” 

As many as 200 Messerschmitt fighters engaged us in a death struggle four miles above earth. They spewed red sheets of fire in swift succession. My heart raced at the sight. Veteran crews quickly realized the Germans had changed their tactics. Rather than charging at us obliquely, the enemy sped to the front of our formation and charged head-on—going down our line of four or five air groups at 400 miles per hour, twice the speed of our planes. The scene resembled a massive domino effect. Squeezing the triggers of their powerful 20mm cannons with each pass, oncoming Germans could hardly miss. Minus brief pauses for cooling, their heavy guns could unleash 700 shells per minute. The enemy put these weapons to shocking use. 

One of my comrades later referred to the sudden onslaught as “a huge ball of German fighters.” Bandits screaming forward at closing speeds of 600 miles per hour were the stuff of nightmares. White gun flashes dotted the sky. Deathly volleys had the capacity to shred our 37,000-pound Liberators to pieces. With crazed determination, Jerries sometimes pressed their assaults within yards of our aircraft. I maintained a tight grip on the controls, doing my best to concentrate amid the struggle.        

In hot pursuit of the enemy was an array of American fighters assigned to protect those of us in the heavies. Among the support squadrons were vaunted P-51 Mustangs, now known as “Cadillacs of the Sky” for their sleek design and astounding velocity of up to 440 mph. The arrival of these long-range fighters we referred to as “little friends” was a form of deliverance. When Mustangs emerged, Nazi fighters sometimes dispersed to prey on vulnerable bombers with less protection. These prompt reinforcements helped level the playing field and led to a swirl of dogfights. Flyboys corkscrewed in and out of the clouds at a dizzying pace.

At the nose of our plane, Sgt. George “Bill” Puska blared away at oncoming intruders with hefty twin .50-caliber machine guns. Tracer rounds fired in short bursts allowed for aiming correction and served as targeting markers for five fellow gunners onboard. Cabin floors were littered with small mountains of spent, sizzling brass. I hardly heard any of the racket with the constant whir of the twin Pratt & Whitney engines I could see outside my window. In this frenzied environment, gunners set their targets with extreme precision to avoid instances of friendly fire. Our Mustangs or P-47 Thunderbolts could be misidentified even at close range. The ability to distinguish friend from foe was essential. 

As copilot, I kept watch on other planes in formation. If my skipper was wounded or killed, command passed to me. I hoped that would never be the case. The main pilot carefully observed instruments and control panels. His primary duty was to take our plane to a target and back safely. Both our jobs in the cockpit were exceedingly technical. The operation of our equipment required constant attentiveness. If I made a mistake, it could be fatal.

I spoke into my throat microphone, “How’s everybody doing?” If one of the crew didn’t answer, I sent another man to check him. Communication and teamwork were fundamental to our endurance. The emergence of the Luftwaffe that summer morning put us to the ultimate test. 

The fight lasted perhaps eight minutes. Despite the tempo of combat, time seemed to slow as we tried to escape. One by one, Jerries eventually peeled from the engagement. No longer hunted by German interceptors, many a battered ship staggered the 450 miles back to base. Surviving aircraft rumbled through Holland, toward the Channel, and on to England. Thankfully, I somehow remained cool and composed through it all.

Our crew was luckier than many. A group flying adjacent to us lost all eleven crews of its lower squadron. Over 100 men were gone in a matter of minutes. To our immediate right was Lt. Frank Fulks, piloting the high squadron’s lead plane. His aircraft suffered several hits on the nose and top turret from 20mm cannons. His ship was in a shambles. Fulks’s navigator and bombardier were seriously wounded as well. The pilot fell out of formation for a brief time and then took position on our wing, remaining there until we reached home.

All the while, we fell into dire straits ourselves. Our number three engine failed just before we crossed back over the German border. Although the B-24 could still fly with one engine out of commission, the malfunction made a difficult day even more harrowing. We were certainly not alone in our predicament. The bomb group endured many difficult landings that afternoon. 

During the stressful return flight, my eyes were drawn to the top of Fulks’s battered plane. The sight has never left me. 

The turret was shattered and caved in. The gunner’s head had been ripped away by the brute force of the explosion that claimed his life. The wind of the slipstream had siphoned his blood across the plane’s exterior surface. The top fuselage was painted with ghastly red streaks all the way to the tail.    

It was the goriest sight I’ve ever seen in my life.

To cope with this horror, I tried erasing the memory. My job required so much concentration that I couldn’t dwell on such scenes.

That operation marked just my second journey into combat. When we returned to quarters that night, we discovered our names listed on the board for the next day’s mission. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” we collectively moaned. The deathly cycle was already reset for morning, but I was too exhausted to contemplate matters of life and death. I collapsed into my bunk and promptly fell asleep. Over the next four months, there would be many more missions to fly, many more targets to bomb, and many more friends to mourn.

Adapted from Into the Cold Blue: My World War II Journeys with the Mighty Eighth Air Force by John F. Homan with Jared Frederick (Regnery History, 2024). Available on Amazon.

this article first appeared in AVIATION HISTORY magazine

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Deep Sea Vision, a company based in Charleston, South Carolina, has obtained sonar images from almost 17,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean that might show the Lockheed Electra that Amelia Earhart was flying when she disappeared in 1937.

Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic (as a passenger in 1928 and solo in 1932). Those flights and others she made would have ensured her place in the history books, but much of the enduring interest in Earhart results from her disappearance. She and navigator Fred Noonan vanished over the Pacific during an attempted flight around the world in a Lockheed Electra 10-E, and people still speculate about what happened.

On January 27, 2024, Deep Sea Vision’s founder and chief executive officer, Tony Romeo, announced that he may have found the airplane. Romeo’s team had been using a $9 million Norwegian Hugin 6000, an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), to search for the twin-engine airplane in the fall of 2023. When examining some data later, they noted an image taken some 100 miles from Howland Island on the sea floor 16,500 feet deep that could show the Electra. “I’m not saying we definitely found her,” Romeo told the Charleston Post and Courier, but the image was encouraging and appears to show an airplane. He plans to return to the area later this year with underwater cameras in an attempt to verify the object’s identity.

 There have been many theories about Earhart’s disappearance over the years. Romeo’s discovery, if substantiated, would indicate that Earhart and Noonan, unable to find their intended target of Howland Island (about 2,000 miles from Honolulu), were forced to ditch in the ocean and drowned. An organization called TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) speculates that they landed and perished on tiny Gardner (now Nikumaroro) Island. Others have theorized that they were captured by the Japanese and executed. In 2017 a History Channel documentary claimed to have uncovered a photo that showed Earhart and Noonan as prisoners on a dock in the Marshall Islands, but investigators quickly discovered that the photo was taken two years before they disappeared. A book from 1970 asserted that Earhart was still alive and living under an assumed name in New Jersey. (The woman in question sued the book’s author, and won.)

Time will tell if Romeo has truly solved the mystery or just added another intriguing chapter to it.

Pham Tuan occupies two special places in Vietnamese history books—although both distinctions have attracted some controversy as well as fame. He gets credit for being the first Vietnamese fighter pilot to shoot down a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress and with being the first Southeast Asian to reach outer space.

Born in Kien Xuong District of Thai Binh Province on February 14, 1947, Pham Tuan joined the North Vietnamese military in September 1965 as a radar mechanics student and later trained at the Krasnodar flight school in the Soviet Union. Back in Vietnam, he underwent further training, including night flying, in the 910th Air Training Regiment. His first combat assignment was piloting Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 fighters with the 923rd Fighter Regiment in 1969. He switched to MiG-21s with the 921st from 1970 to 1973. 

On December 14, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon responded to the North Vietnamese walking out of the Paris peace talks by approving Operation Linebacker II, a renewed bombing offensive intended to force them back to the negotiating table. Although both opposing air arms fought with all they had, the most prominent protagonists in Linebacker II were waves of B-52s that dropped huge bomb loads from high altitude, opposed by batteries of S-75 Dvina (NATO codename SA-2 Guideline) surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). The North Vietnamese began exhausting their missile stocks over the next two weeks, however, so on December 26 their air force committed 12 MiG-21 pilots, eight of whom were trained in night fighting, to take a more active role in defense of the beleaguered SAM sites by intercepting the B-52s. 

On the night of December 27-28, Pham Tuan, flying MiG-21MF bort number 5121, took off from Hanoi’s Noi Bai airfield and was directed by ground control intercept (GCI) to attack three B-52s reported over Moc Chao. He spotted the targets at an altitude of 23,000 feet, accelerated to 746 mph and climbed above the bombers to 33,000 feet. As he closed on the B-52s, GCI instructed, “You have permission to fire twice, then get away quickly,” since American fighters were approaching. “I launched two [K-13] heat-seeking missiles from a distance of 2 kilometers,” he reported. “Big flames were visible around the second B-52 as I turned sharply to the left and descended to 2,000 meters before landing at Yen Bai.” 

Pham Tuan received credit for the first successful B-52 interception by a fighter plane, for which he was awarded the Vietnam People’s Armed Forces medal on September 3, 1973. He claimed to have last seen his quarry burning at the border between Hoa Binh and Vinh Phouc provinces and that the entire crew were killed. The United States Air Force lost two bombers that night. The six crewmen of B-52D 56-0599 of the 77th Squadron, 28th Bombardment Wing, 307th Strategic Wing, operating from U-Tapao, Thailand, bailed out and were rescued, and later testified that their plane had been fatally damaged by the last of 15 SAMs launched at them. B-52D 56-0605 of the 7th Bombardment Wing, attached to the 43rd Strategic Wing from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, was also lost that night, with two men killed and four taken prisoner. All four survivors subsequently claimed that they, too, had been SAM victims. Vietnamese aviation historians, however, now credit Pham Tuan with the latter B-52. 

After the war Pham Tuan married and had two children, but he remained in the air force. Meanwhile, in April 1967, the Soviet Union initiated an Intercosmos program, opening up crew positions on its spacecraft to non-Soviet personnel. One of the three Vietnamese pilots sent to the Gagarin Air Force Academy for cosmonaut training in 1977 was disqualified due to health problems and on April 1, 1979, Pham Tuan was selected to replace him for the sixth international flight. On July 23, 1980, he and Soviet cosmonaut Viktor Vasilyevich Gorbatko launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Soyuz 37. 

Although there’s no doubt that Pham Tuan reached space, a popular joke among Vietnamese referred to him as “the hitchhiker,” because he left all the “driving” to his Soviet hosts. Still, there were indications that he was not just along for the ride. Three days before takeoff, he was informed that he was to serve as chief cosmonaut aboard Soyuz. Then technical problems arose with the rocket engine. Facing the possibility of an abort before launch, Pham Tuan received orders to shut down all systems, but ground command was able to restore the engine to normal operation and the mission proceeded as planned.

On July 24, Soyuz 37 docked at space station Salyut 6, where among other things Pham Tuan conducted experiments in melting mineral samples in microgravity and with azolla plants as well as photographing Vietnam for mapping purposes. Departing the space station aboard Soyuz 36, he and Gorbatko returned to Earth on July 31, having completed 142 orbits in just under eight days. 

Besides the Ho Chi Minh Order and Hero of Labor, on July 31, 1980, Pham Tuan was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union. He is one of the few foreigners to receive the USSR’s highest decoration. He rose in rank to lieutenant general and served in the ministry of defense and as a member of the Vietnam National Assembly before retiring in 2007. The MiG-21MF 5121, in which he scored his single, controversial aerial victory, is on display outside the Vietnam Military History Museum in Hanoi. 

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Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby, the Boeing B-17G featured on the cover of Aviation History’s Summer 2023 issue, has completed another journey and embarked on a new chapter in its existence. Since 1988 the bomber had been part of the collections of the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, but in August the first pieces of the disassembled airplane arrived at the Smithsonian Institution’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, where it will eventually be reassembled and put on display. Currently a wing and fuselage are on display in the Boeing Aviation Hangar. In exchange, the Smithsonian had given the air force museum a B-17D it had in its collection called The Swoose. 

Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby had a checkered career. Named after an Andrews Sisters’ song (with an extra “Shoo”), the B-17G landed in Sweden on May 29, 1944, after engine failures on its 24th mission over Europe meant it could not return safely to England. Following the war, the bomber served as an airliner and performed other tasks for owners in Sweden, Denmark and France. France returned the Boeing to the United States in 1972 and after being restored it landed at the Air Force’s museum.

The Swoose has had its own interesting career—and was also named after a song. The B-17D—or portions of it, anyway—reached the Philippines in October 1941 as war with Japan became increasingly inevitable. When war did come, the B-17—originally named Ole Betsy—participated in the fighting and was damaged enough that it had to be pieced together with parts from several wrecked bombers. It acquired its name from a song called “Alexander the Swoose,” about a bird that was half swan and half goose. With Captain Frank Kurtz as its pilot, the airplane served as the personal transport for Lt. Gen. George H. Brett. The B-17 returned to the United States for a war bond tour and after the war it served as a war memorial in Los Angeles before ending up, disassembled, at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. The cobbled-together bomber is the only surviving B-17D. Kurtz, incidentally, named his daughter—the actress Swoosie Kurtz—after the airplane. The Air Force museum plans to restore The Swoose to its appearance when it served as Brett’s transport.

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Seventy-five years ago, as both the Cold War and aviation technology were ramping up, the newly formed United States Air Force wanted to show the world the reach of its air arsenal. The recent development of functional mid-air refueling techniques by the British allowed Strategic Air Command’s commander General Curtis LeMay to demonstrate to both friends and foes that long-haul bombing missions of almost unlimited length and duration were now possible.

On February 26, 1949, Lucky Lady II, a SAC B-50A bomber commanded by Captain James Gallagher, took off from Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas, in an attempt to become the first airplane to fly nonstop around the world. Gallagher’s expanded crew of 14 included three pilots who rotated in four- to six-hour shifts, while an extra fuel tank located in the bomb bay increased the airplane’s range.

Four mid-air refuelings from KB-29M tankers—over the Azores, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and Hawaii—allowed Lucky Lady II to stay aloft for 23,452 miles over 94 hours and one minute before returning to Carswell on March 2. The day after Lucky Lady II landed, the New York Times commented, “Wings have brought us far since Magellan’s ship Vittoria took about 1,000 days to make the first circumnavigation in 1519-22.” (That was four days for Lucky Lady II versus two years and nine months for Magellan.) Gallagher and his crew were each awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the flight won that year’s Mackay Trophy.

Heady days indeed—but there was a cost. Overshadowed amid the celebration was the fact that the third refueling tanker had encountered storms on its return route and had crashed over the Philippines on March 1. All nine servicemen aboard lost their lives.

Soon after its record-breaking flight, Lucky Lady II suffered serious damage in a belly landing and was dismantled. By the late 1960s, the surviving fuselage had made its way to the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California, which still displays this singular piece of aviation history.

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A talented young officer in the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service, Mitsuo Fuchida was chosen by Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo to coordinate and lead the attack on Pearl Harbor. From his place in the center seat of a Nakajima B5N2 “Kate,” Fuchida would be able to see the state of the harbor’s defenses and command his waves of attacking aircraft.

The model company Hasegawa initially released its 1/48-scale Kate in 2001 and has offered it in a number of guises—as a torpedo plane, in a version with folding wings and in one with a single armored piercing bomb. That kit, its first version, includes markings that are not for the more popular torpedo plane, but for Fuchida’s command aircraft, the “tip of the spear” of the Pearl Harbor attack.

THE KIT
Typical for Hasegawa, the detail is accurate to a fault. Begin with the cockpit, paying close attention to the many small parts that make up the aircrew’s “office.” It was common for different manufacturers to have their own particular color of interior paint. Nakajima’s greenish gray (often called Nakajima Interior Green) is different from the greenish blue that was typical for Mitsubishi’s aircraft. Paint the cockpit parts and get started.

The control panels have nicely raised detail, but decals are provided for those of us lacking the talent for painting tiny dials and switches. The only extras needed are seat belts for the three crew positions.

Once completed, the cockpit assembly forms a tub that fits neatly between the fuselage halves. The fit is very good, but it pays to dry-fit parts first. Once everything is together, set aside the completed fuselage.

Next assemble the bomber’s engine and paint it black. Cement the engine to the firewall and drybrush an aluminum color over the engine’s cylinders to make the detail pop. Paint the main crankcase a medium gray. Paint the cowling and the forward firewall flat black. On many Japanese aircraft a flat black color extends from the cowling to the pilot’s windscreen to act as an anti-glare panel. Paint the cowling and glue it in place and then set the completed assembly aside.

It’s time to attach the large broad wing to the fuselage. Again, the fit is very good and requires minimal filler and sanding.

The modeler can pose with the flaps dropped, as they would be upon landing, or up, creating a cleaner profile. Moveable surfaces like the rudder, ailerons and the horizontal stabilizer were fabric covered on the real airplane and should be painted on the model with the same color as the bomber’s interior. The rest of the airplane was left natural metal. Paint your upper surfaces a dark green.

Photos from the time show that many carrier-based aircraft had a fair amount of chipping and wear. Images of what is purported to be Fuchida’s Kate show the camouflage, hastily applied without primer, flaking off from exposure to the harsh weather at sea. There are a couple of ways to replicate the chipped effect. One is to spray common hairspray over the natural metal color, let it dry, and then paint the dark green color over it. There are also a number of “chipping fluids” on the market that you can brush or spray on in much the same way. Once you’ve applied the chipping solution and dark green camouflage, use a toothpick and an old toothbrush to chip away at the camouflage color. Wet the toothbrush and start scrubbing the various seams and panels to remove the green paint in much the same way as the harsh weather did to the real thing.

Take your time and experiment first before going all in on the model. It is a bit of an artistic technique. Once you’re satisfied with the look, set aside the aircraft to dry thoroughly.

Next, spray a light gloss varnish to prepare the model for the decals. Markings are a very simple affair. A large Hinomaru (the classic large red disc) appears in six positions: on the top and bottom of the wings and on both sides of the fuselage. Paint the tail red with three broad yellow stripes on the rudder along with the code “AI-103,” which signifies that this is the commander’s airplane from the wing aboard the aircraft carrier Akagi. A coat of a dull varnish seals the decals.

Assemble the landing gear next and paint the tires a black rubber color. The gear struts and landing gear doors should be a natural metal aluminum. Add some mild weathering and oil and fuel stains. Keep the weathering to a minimum; mechanics would have taken excellent care of their aircraft on the long voyage across the Pacific.

The kit gives the modeler a choice of a one-piece canopy that can be closed or kept open to show off that detailed interior. The clear pieces are thin, so be careful not to crack the plastic. Invest in a set of precut adhesive masks for the canopy. You can find a number of brands at reasonable prices. Pick one that is designed specifically to be used with a Hasegawa kit. Mask off the different canopy pieces and paint them the same dark green as the rest of the aircraft. Let the pieces dry thoroughly before removing the masks. Pay close attention to the four canopy pieces at the rear of the cockpit and how they will fit together when slid open to expose the rear-firing machine gun. Finally, attach the propeller, which should be painted natural aluminum; the pitot tube on the leading edge of the port wing; and the antenna that sits on the top of the canopy.

With everything in place, Commander Fuchida’s Kate is ready to take its spot on the display shelf along with the rest of your collection of aircraft from that fateful December morning.