Sky's the limit for a comeback You might have noticed that thick, white letters don't really dominate the sky anymore. Have you seen any "Marry me" or "I love U" notes lately? It certainly isn’t as common as it used to be. What we might now think of as old-fashioned or antique or even low-tech, [...]
The Spruce Goose: an incredible feat of modern engineering and one of the most famous aircraft in the history of flight. Howard Hughes – in modern times (shamefully) known best as the character that Leonardo DiCaprio portrayed in The Aviator – will go down in history as an aviation revolutionary, a brilliant thinker, and a [...]
Do you ever get tired of the same old view from the same old ground? Of Course you do. Just because we were born to have two feet planted on the ground doesn’t mean that we have to limit our perception of the world to a constant 5-foot-8-inch view (or other perfectly respectable heights). This [...]
It's official: the 2016 Summer Olympics are over in Rio. America took away the most medals with a total of 121 (46 gold). Britain followed with a total of 67 medals (27 gold), and China a respectable third with 70 total medals (26 gold). A lot has happened over the past two weeks, but amid [...]
1 if by land, 2 if by sea, 3 if by air, 4 if...all of the above. The Albatross is a special plane...or it's a very special boat (really, it's both). How? Because this craft is not just an aircraft: it's a large twin-radial engine amphibious flying boat. Really. Operational History The Grumman HU-16 Albatross was an improvement [...]
August 17, 1927 marks the end of the Dole Derby--an ill-fated air race Charles Lindbergh’s Orteig Prize-winning, nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic inspired a number of aviators and aviation-enthusiasts to fly their way into history (such as Tailwind’s journey aboard the American Nurse). Lindbergh’s fame particularly inspired Hawaii pineapple magnate James D. Dole to [...]
Elon Musk is no stranger to The Flight Blog. However, amid all of the commotion regarding his involvement in SpaceX, the Hyperloop, Tesla Motors, OpenAI, and the Death Star, we’ve somehow managed to overlook Musk’s subtle plan to change the way we travel by air. Musk has already developed an automobile company that has changed [...]
When it comes to supersonic spy planes, the SR-71 Blackbird may be the most notable. This Lockheed black project was championed by Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, who was the head of Lockheed's Skunk-works division. During its Air Force service life from 1964 to 1998, 32 of these planes were built, 12 of which [...]
There's something about flying in a heavier-than-air craft 30,000 feet in the air that leads to plentiful fact or fiction debate across the internet...even in this day and age where the answers are quite literally right at our fingertips. Regardless of how or why these flying urban legends continue to proliferate the good old American psyche, we at the [...]
Let slip the dogs of war Antis and Robert Bozděch (source: Daily Mail) January 1940: Phoney War. Václav Robert Bozděch and Pierre Duval were on a reconnaissance mission over the German front in their twin-seater Potez 630 aircraft when they were hit by anti-aircraft fire. They crashed in no-mans land between the French [...]
