Category: Military

The Destruction of a Dream

There is only one aircraft type where I have always used the definite article when writing about it: The Antonov An-225. The An-225 is a one-of-a-kind cargo aircraft designed by Antonov Design in then-Soviet Ukraine. The aircraft’s name is Mriya, literally “Dream” in Ukrainian (Мрія). This massive aircraft with six turbofan engines is capable of…

Read more… 4 Mar 22

F-35C lost in South China Sea

On Monday, the 24th of January, the US Naval Institute News released that there had been a landing mishap on the deck of USS Carl Vinson when a landing F-35C fell off the flight deck. The USS Carl Vinson is a Nimitz-class super carrier named after a congressman from Georgia who was known as “the…

Read more… 28 Jan 22

Abused fighter planes and the men who love them

A few months ago, I wrote about how to shoot down a fighter jet while flying it, the case of a test-pilot in a Grumman F-11 Tiger who managed to catch up to his own gunfire. One of the fantastic things I found out in the course of writing that piece was that Tom Attridge…

Read more… 23 Oct 20

Mid-Air Collision in Marine Training Exercise

Last week, on the 29th of September 2020, two US Marine aircraft collided over the Naval Air Facility El Centro in California while taken part in a refuelling exercise as a part of a seven-week training event, the Weapons and Tactics Instructor course. The fighter was an F-35B (Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II), a single-seater,…

Read more… 2 Oct 20

How to shoot down a fighter jet…while flying it.

The Grumman F-11 Tiger was a popular US Navy fighter aircraft introduced in 1956. At the time, it was known as the F11F Tiger. Grumman had been working to modernise their Cougar as a part of the Cold War arms race. US aircraft were being outperformed by the swept-wing design of the Soviet’s Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15…

Read more… 21 Aug 20

Survivor’s Obligation

In 2003, an unbelievable photograph was taken of Captain Chris Stricklin ejecting from an F-16 during a Thunderbirds aerial display. I wrote about it a few years ago: Ejection 0.8 Seconds Before Impact. Stricklin was flying Thunderbird 6, performing the Split S manoeuvre as a part of his solo performance with the Thunderbirds. The Split…

Read more… 10 Jul 20

Accident Reports

Bird Opens Cargo Door on A320

On the 20th of June in 2011, an Airbus A320-212, registration CS-TKJ, taxied to runway 05 at Aeroporto de Madeira for a scheduled morning flight from Funchal to Copenhagen with…

Alitalia flight 404: The result of a dozen small decisions

Last week, we looked at the key events that led to the Alitalia flight 404 crash. A few points from the previous post: Maintenance replaced both radio receivers in the…

Demystifying

I am a teapot

A reader contacted me to ask about a missing flight 404; they had heard on a trivia podcast that the original computer error message 404 was based on two flights…

The Legend of the Ghost of Kyiv

On the 25th of February 2022, Plane & Pilot magazine shared a video of the “Ghost of Kyiv” overflying Kyiv in a Ukrainian MiG-29. An unnamed Ukrainian fighter pilot shot…

History

Avro York Runway Excursion at Stansted

While researching another subject, I discovered this accident report from 1956 which I just had to share with you. Normally, an aviation accident investigation is done by a group of…

Amazing Aerial View of Edinburgh

When I first saw this image, I assumed it was result of modern image manipulations, maybe even the poster for a film. It was too perfect and too modern to…

Fun Stuff

Funniest Thing You've Heard On the Radio

I’ve been struggling this week and was just panicking that I would not have a post finished in time for you for today when I discovered that Reddit had saved…

A Little Bit of Everything

There’s so much great aviation writing and video out there and I’m always appreciative when people send me fun things; it seems a shame not to share them! So here’s…