WWII B-17 Ball Turrets and the Gunners That Manned Them

By Michelle Shocklee Albert Chaparro, US Army Air Corp, 1942 I'm currently in the middle of researching a new time-slip novel that will,…

During the Cold War, Canada Designed a World-Class Interceptor – But Was the Program Infested With Soviet Spies?

The Tupolev airliner rolled to a stop in Moscow on August 19, 1955. Aboard was KGB agent Evgeny Brik, back home for a…

Mystery Ship: Can you identify this winged Quasimodo?

As France began to recover from World War II, its once-formidable aviation industry was revived just as the jet age was forcing a…

Mystery Ship: Can You Identify This Dutch Reaper?

The concept of the general-purpose fighter—a long-range, heavily armed airplane capable of achieving air superiority while at the same time shouldering other tasks,…

Erich Hartmann, the Most Successful Fighter Pilot of All Time

By Kelly Bell By May 8, 1945, Adolf Hitler had been dead for more than a week. Germany was in the act of…

Why was the de Havilland Mosquito so successful in WW2?

We think of the idea of a wooden plane as somehow backward looking – stick and string WW1 types – but in fact…

Ludwig Meister: German World War II ACE

Ludwig Meister (14 December 1919 – 26 November 2011) was a Luftwaffe night fighter ace and recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross (German: Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes) during World…

Which one is better, the J-20, the F-22 or the T-50?

The Chengdu J-20 marks the first entry of a multirole stealth fighter into China’s armed forces. According to the Department of Defense (DOD),…

The WWII Focke-Wulf Ta 183 “Huckebein” and It’s post-war descendants, the F-86, MiG-15, Saab 29 and IAe 33 Pulqui II

Focke-Wulf Ta 183 Luft '46 entry      In late 1942, Focke-Wulf engineer Hans Multhopp headed up a design team that started aerodynamic…

The History of German Aviation: Kurt Tank, Germany’s greatest aircraft designer during World War II.

Though best known as a designer of airplanes, particularly the lethal Focke-Wulf Fw-190, Tank never lost sight of his pilot roots. Along with…