The Fairey Fulmar was the F-14 Tomcat of its day, and I will prove it. Comparing the Fairey Fulmar to the Grumman F-14 Tomcat is sacrilegious, but I don’t care. One was a stolid British 260-mph, ...

May 2026: The U-2 Over the Soviet Union, Secrets of the Spitfire, Sky Daddy, Beaufighter vs Flak Ships, Junkers Ju 88C, S.E. 210 Caravelle, Lavotchkin La-5, Polish Military Aircraft 1918-1939 Books ...

Unlikely as it is, the main competitor of the F-35 is the Saab Gripen-E. These two fighter types, are as different as they could get, one akin to a bulky people carrier, the other a stripped-down ...

2 engines can be lighter than single one having double thrust. Intervals between inspections and overhauls can be little (usually 33%) longer. Second engine over the sea gives much higher comfort for ...

France was determined to never again suffer the catastrophe of invasion. So with a blank cheque, the nation embarked on a major post-war shopping spree to radically modernise and reequip its armed ...

It was my last long cross-country flight from Schleswig NAS via Lossiemouth, Scotland to Keflavik NAS in Iceland, back in July 1982. It was the year I left the Starfighter to fly Tornados. MY LAST big ...

Aerospace Engineer Joe Wilding examines why the Mustang was so good. “I want to start with an embarrassing confession. With a lifelong obsession with aircraft and a few decades of experience ...

For whatever reason, there is no published Spitfire count of victories – or at least not one I could find. It is in this apparent absence of this vital information, people have laid claim that the ...

Jim Smith had significant technical roles in the development of the UK’s leading military aviation programmes from ASRAAM and Nimrod, to the JSF and Eurofighter Typhoon. He was also Britain’s ...

The Soviet Union had its fair share of brilliant aeronautical engineers and aircraft designers. The likes of Ilyushin, Mikoyan, Sukhoi, Tupolev, and the rest became household names, even in the West.

Flying twice as fast as an AR15 round and capable of pulling G forces that leave pilots with the same painful lack of mobility as if they weighed an actual ton, a fighter aircraft asks a lot of its ...

The Gloster Javelin was the world’s first twin-jet delta-wing fighter. It was the Royal Air Force’s best interceptor of the 1950s, and was almost brilliant. It did what it was asked to do. It was a ...