Journal

On 18 December 1975 the Conseil de defense killed the aeroplane the French air force had spent three and a half years asking for. The ACF was a twin-engined, strongly swept, Mach 2.5 machine that some compared to the American F-15, only bigger, and it was reckoned to cost more than twice what a Mirage… Read article

The B-25 Mitchell was bought off a drawing board, built in two factories, and then rebuilt by the men who had to fly it. The full history: the strafers, the 75 mm gun, the Bismarck Sea, Italy and the Marine PBJ. Read article

Early in the afternoon of 8 August 1993, a Saab JAS 39 Gripen was flying a display over Riddarfjärden in the middle of Stockholm, in front of the crowds at the city’s Water Festival. Coming out of a slow turn the pilot put in a brief full right stick, felt what he later described as… Read article

On the night of 30 May 1982, on the Falklands, one Royal Air Force Chinook was briefed to move three 105 mm light guns, 85 men and 22 tonnes of ammunition to Mount Kent. It went at night on night vision goggles, through severe snow showers, to a drop point that the briefing said was… Read article

On 17 January 1991, the first night of the Gulf air war, F/A-18C Hornets of VFA-81 flew off USS Saratoga loaded for a bombing run. On the way in, Lieutenant Commander Mark Fox and Lieutenant Nick Mongillo each shot down a MiG-21. Then they carried on to their bombing target on the same sortie. Read article

At about one in the morning on 24 March 2003, over farmland south of Baghdad, every light in the district went out at once. Al Haswah and Al Iskandariyah went dark together, for roughly two seconds, and then the sky filled with gunfire. Thirty AH-64 Apaches were flying through it, blacked out and low. In… Read article

At ten past three in the morning the Vimy fell out of a cloud towards the sea. What Alcock and Brown each said about the first non-stop Atlantic flight, and where the two accounts part company. Read article