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Channel: Flight Stories – HistoricWings.com :: A Magazine for Aviators, Pilots and Adventurers
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The Atlantique Incident — Part 1 of 2

Published on August 10, 2013 By Thomas Van Hare Squadron Leader P.K. Bundela and his wingman, Flight Officer S. Narayanan, were sitting ready at the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Naliya when the call...

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The FPV Revolution

Published on August 26, 2013 By Thomas Van Hare The heady days of the early 1910s are long past. Today, flying a plane or helicopter is expensive and challenging — it is also fun and amazing, of...

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The First Drone

Published on August 29, 2013 By Thomas Van Hare The use of drones in military service has a long history.  Many remember how German engineers created glide bombs during World War II.  These ranged from...

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An End to the Age of Innocence

Published on August 5, 2014 by Thomas Van Hare One hundred years ago this week, the world descended into the conflict we know now as World War I.  Soon to be called the Great War, it would prove deadly...

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The Right Stuff

Published February 18, 2015 by Thomas Van Hare Did you ever wonder where the term, “The Right Stuff” came from?  Most people would say that it was a product of the X-planes testing program out in the...

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Hawaii to New Jersey for $75

Published March 9, 2015 By Thomas Van Hare On March 7 and 8, 1949, former USAAF pilot Captain William P. “Bill” Odom flew a V-tailed Beech Bonanza that he named, ”Waikiki Beech”, from Hawaii to...

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The Cigarette Club

Published March 17, 2015 By Thomas C. Van Hare These days, it seems that the only connection between cigarettes and aviation are signs in aircraft lavatories reading, “NO SMOKING”.  Smoke detectors are...

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The Black and White Marble

Published on April 1, 2015 By Thomas Van Hare On September 12, 1962, at Rice Stadium in Texas, President John F. Kennedy spoke these words: “We choose to go to the moon.  We choose to go to the moon in...

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Surrender Flight to Ie Shima

Published on April 7, 2015 By Thomas Van Hare Most people, even most historians, would say that Japan surrendered to the United States at the end of World War II in a large ceremony aboard the US Navy...

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Defection to Israel!

Published on April 13, 2015 By Thomas Van Hare On Sunday, January 19, 1964, an Egyptian flight instructor based at Bilbeis AB in the Nile Delta, walked calmly to his Czech-built Yak-11 training plane....

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The Saqqara Bird

Published on May 7, 2015 By Thomas Van Hare In 1898, the famed “Egyptologists” of old uncovered the tomb of Pa-di-Imen at Saqqara, Egypt.  As with every great discovery of that era (and most since!),...

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USAFE’S Famed Flight Boots

Published on July 27, 2015 By Thomas Van Hare At the height of the Cold War, the US Air Force had dozens of fighter interceptor squadrons spread throughout Europe’s NATO alliance.  This was the front...

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The Mystery of Immelmann’s Final Flight

Published on July 20, 2016 By Thomas Van Hare “It was 9 in the evening, when the rat-tat of aerial machine guns lured me out of my quarters, and I saw at a height of several thousand yards five...

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The Great Air War by Stereoscope

Published on August 8, 2016 by Thomas Van Hare On the home front during the Great War, 100 years ago, 3D viewing of photographs was very popular, the most common means being with a Holmes Stereoscope....

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Ten of My Rules for Air Fighting

Published on August 15, 2016 By Thomas Van Hare During the Battle of Britain, in nearly every RAF operations hut, you would find a small poster on the wall entitled, “Ten of My Rules for Air Fighting”....

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The Special Mission

Published on August 22, 2016 By Thomas Van Hare Lieutenant Anselme Léon Emile Marchal took off into the gathering evening skies of France.  After a brisk turn around his airfield, he headed east into...

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“The Wright Aeroplane and its Fabled Performance”

Published on September 12, 2016 By Thomas Van Hare “A Parisian automobile paper recently published a letter from the Wright brothers to Capt. Ferber of the French army, in which statements are made...

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The Dippy Twist Loop

Published on September 26, 2016 By Thomas Van Hare She was just the fourth woman in the world to be certified as a pilot.  She was the first to fly a plane at night.  She invented sky writing — and...

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The First Air Support for Tanks

Published on October 3, 2016 By Thomas Van Hare Almost exactly one hundred years ago, the world’s first tanks rolled onto the battlefields of the Somme.  Amazingly, the first use of airplanes to...

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Royal Flush

On Sunday, October 10, 1943 — 73 years ago in aviation history — the 8th Air Force flew a bombing raid against the city of Münster in Nazi Germany.  At the time, the 8th Air Force was still fairly...

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Puzzle Pictures

Published on November 19, 2016 By Thomas Van Hare The challenges of aerial photo interpretation are extraordinary.  A dark smudge at the base of a hill may be the concealed entrance of a military cave...

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First Off at Pearl Harbor

Published on December 7, 2016 By Thomas Van Hare Exactly 75 years ago today, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, catching America by surprise.  From the first minutes of the...

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Fritz Beckhardt’s Final Flight

On November 13, 1918, the pilots of the German fighter group, Kampfeinsitzerstaffel 5 (Kest 5), flew their final mission of the Great War.  Two days earlier, at the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the...

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Encounter over the Iron Curtain

Published on February 10, 2017 By Thomas Van Hare The two USAFE F-84E Thunderjets made a beeline toward the border between West Germany and Czechoslovakia.  At the border, they turned left to a...

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The Bombing of Tulsa

Published on February 27, 2017 By Thomas Van Hare On the morning of June 1, 1921, the Ku Klux Klan and the white population of Tulsa made their move. At the sound of three blasts from a siren, they...

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America’s Victory Program

Published on March 27, 2017 By Thomas Van Hare Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler, a well-known Democratic Party isolationist, was shocked by what the US Army Air Corps officer, a Captain by rank,...

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The Curtiss Autoplane

Published on May 7, 2017 By Thomas Van Hare “At the aero show held at New York early this year there was exhibited a Curtiss triplane, which aroused the greatest interest owing to the decidedly novel...

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A Daring Flight on D-Day

Published on June 6, 2017 By Thomas Van Hare On D-Day, June 6, 1944, after passing a tense and confusing early morning hours in the cockpit of his yellow-nosed Messerschmitt Bf 109G, Leutnant Thomas...

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The Six-Ship Takeoff

Published October 23, 2017 By Thomas Van Hare “Our job tomorrow will be to take off well before daylight for the first time in history and bomb the gun positions and defenses on the landing beaches...

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The 1935 Plan to Use Rocket Airplanes to Deliver US Mail

Published on March 6, 2018 By Ron Miller/io9.com In 1935, a wealthy, enterprising stamp dealer, 32-year-old Frido W. Kessler, came up with what seemed like a brilliant idea. He would commission a...

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Who Invented the Rocketship?

Published on March 12, 2018 By Ron Miller/io9 The birth of the idea of traveling to other worlds through outer space can be given a specific date: January 7, 1610.  That evening, Galileo Galilei first...

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By Rocket Plane Across the Atlantic

Published March 23, 2018 By Ron Miller/io9 A stubby-winged plane launches itself from an airport runway on the outskirts of Berlin. When it reaches an altitude of several miles, it fires its rocket...

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Pigs in Space!

Published June 5, 2018 By Ron Miller/io9 As much as we love The Muppets, in 1963 a pair of NASA engineers entertained the idea of sending real pigs into space. This is their story.   Launch of Little...

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The Shufti Kite

Published on March 20, 2020 By Thomas Van Hare Week after week on Saturdays — the Jewish sabbath — at roughly noon, the pilots of the newly founded Israeli Air Force (IAF) watched helplessly as a tiny...

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Kipling’s Visions of Conquest of the Air

Published on April 23, 2020 By Thomas C. Van Hare FAMILY DIRIGIBLE. A competent, steady man wanted for slow speed, low level Tangye dirigible.  No night work, no sea trips.  Must be member of the...

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The Siege of Tsingtao

January 19, 2021 By Thomas Van Hare At the start of the Great War in 1914, Europe held sway over much of China.  Great Britain had Hong Kong.  The US and Britain jointly controlled Shanghai.  The...

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The Red Stuff — the Soviet Chuck Yeager Revealed

Published on March 11, 2021 by Thomas Van Hare Most people know of Chuck Yeager, the pilot who first broke the sound barrier in 1947 in his bright orange Bell X-1, a plane he nicknamed “Glamorous...

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Crisis in Space – MiG Mad Marine, John Glenn and Friendship 7

Published on March 21, 2021 By Thomas Van Hare On February 20, 1962, John Glenn, one of America’s most famous astronauts, climbed into the Mercury-Atlas 6 capsule “Friendship 7”.  His mission was to be...

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High Flight – the Untold Story of Aviation’s Greatest Poem

Published on April 18, 2021 By Thomas Van Hare Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of...

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The Swedish Bomb

Beneath the crowded streets of Stockholm, there’s an underground, rock-lined cavern that today serves as a concert and entertainment hall. But back in 1954, it was home to R1, Sweden’s first nuclear...

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