August 2023 Articles

• The first time Stratolaunch test pilot and director of flight operations Evan Thomas beheld the company’s massive six-engine, high-wing, twin-fuselage, payload-launch aircraft, he was “a bit daunted.” “I’ll be honest, the first time I looked at it I went, ‘Wow! I don’t know that I can fly that. That’s going to be a real challenge!’” […]

  

  Flying the Roc! – Stratolaunch test pilot Evan Thomas on flying the world’s largest operational airplane

  The first time Stratolaunch test pilot and director of flight operations Evan Thomas beheld the company’s massive six-engine, high-wing, twin-fuselage, payload-launch aircraft, he was “a bit daunted.” “I’ll be honest, the first time I looked at it I went, ‘Wow! I don’t know that I can fly that. That’s going to be a real challenge!’” […]
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• It has been almost 59 years since legendary pilot Bob Hoover first uttered the famous words, “Gentlemen, you have a race!” Hoover’s now iconic phrase was the cue commencing the first-ever air start for Unlimited class racers at the inaugural National Championship Air Races a few miles northeast of Reno, Nevada in 1964. In early […]

  

  “Gentlemen, You Had a Race … ?” – The end of the Reno Air Races

  It has been almost 59 years since legendary pilot Bob Hoover first uttered the famous words, “Gentlemen, you have a race!” Hoover’s now iconic phrase was the cue commencing the first-ever air start for Unlimited class racers at the inaugural National Championship Air Races a few miles northeast of Reno, Nevada in 1964. In early […]
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• Flight Lieutenant Edward “Ted” Powles, an RAF Spitfire pilot based at Kai Tak, Hong Kong, flew secret and clandestine, high-altitude photographic reconnaissance missions over communist China in a Spitfire PR Mk XIX during the Korean War. His Spitfire is now represented by Spitfire PR.XIX PS915 operated by the Royal Air Force Battle of Britain Memorial […]

  

  Spitfire Spy over China Unauthorized, high-risk photo-recon missions

  Flight Lieutenant Edward “Ted” Powles, an RAF Spitfire pilot based at Kai Tak, Hong Kong, flew secret and clandestine, high-altitude photographic reconnaissance missions over communist China in a Spitfire PR Mk XIX during the Korean War. His Spitfire is now represented by Spitfire PR.XIX PS915 operated by the Royal Air Force Battle of Britain Memorial […]
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• As I sat silently in my B-25—shrewdly named “Fickle Finger of Fate”—awaiting the signal from the Navy deckhand to start my engines, I thought long and hard about how I ended up here and about the unknown that lay ahead. Sitting on the pitching deck of the USS Hornet, with 11 other B-25s ahead of […]

  

  Payback – B-25s settle the score on the Rising Sun

  As I sat silently in my B-25—shrewdly named “Fickle Finger of Fate”—awaiting the signal from the Navy deckhand to start my engines, I thought long and hard about how I ended up here and about the unknown that lay ahead. Sitting on the pitching deck of the USS Hornet, with 11 other B-25s ahead of […]
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• From my perspective as a retired U.S. Army attack helicopter aviator, we owe it to ground soldiers on the front lines to keep the A-10 Warthog Close Air Support airplane in service until a replacement of better capability can be fielded. Additionally, there should not be a proposed 50% reduction in the Tactical Air Control […]

  

  Keep the A-10 Flying!

  From my perspective as a retired U.S. Army attack helicopter aviator, we owe it to ground soldiers on the front lines to keep the A-10 Warthog Close Air Support airplane in service until a replacement of better capability can be fielded. Additionally, there should not be a proposed 50% reduction in the Tactical Air Control […]
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• By the time Lieutenant General Richard Reynolds retired from the USAF in 2005, he’d had a distinguished 34-year career as a B-52 pilot, an Air Force test pilot with experience flying 72 different aircraft types, a B-2 system program office director, a commander of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, and more. […]

  

  Forgiveness – Lt. Gen. Richard Reynolds on Crashing a $379 Million B-1 Prototype

  By the time Lieutenant General Richard Reynolds retired from the USAF in 2005, he’d had a distinguished 34-year career as a B-52 pilot, an Air Force test pilot with experience flying 72 different aircraft types, a B-2 system program office director, a commander of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, and more. […]
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• The British Aircraft (BA) Swallow originated in Germany in 1927 as the Klemm L.25, a tandem two-seat, low-wing, all-wood monoplane. Klemm first exported to Britain in March 1929 and started a small “flood.” Over the next four years, 27 examples followed with Salmson radial engines. The large 42-foot 8 1⁄2-inch wingspan dictated that the L.25 […]

  

  BA Swallow Slab-sided floater

  The British Aircraft (BA) Swallow originated in Germany in 1927 as the Klemm L.25, a tandem two-seat, low-wing, all-wood monoplane. Klemm first exported to Britain in March 1929 and started a small “flood.” Over the next four years, 27 examples followed with Salmson radial engines. The large 42-foot 8 1⁄2-inch wingspan dictated that the L.25 […]
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