Handley Page Halifax: Bomber Command’s Other Heavy
The Handley Page Halifax flew over 75,000 Bomber Command sorties, towed the D-Day gliders and served the RAF until 1952. The full history of Britain’s other heavy bomber. Read article
Tag: WW2 aircraft
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Fairey Swordfish: The Stringbag That Sank Battleships
The Fairey Swordfish was the aircraft that should not have worked: an open-cockpit fabric biplane, cruising below 110 mph, that entered service in 1936 and was obsolete on paper before the war began. It then crippled the Italian battle fleet at Taranto, jammed the Bismarck’s rudders, fought the U-boats from tiny merchant carriers, outlived the… Read article
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Vought F4U Corsair: The Bent-Wing Bird
The Vought F4U Corsair was the bent-wing bird: the US Navy’s fastest wartime fighter, a machine so powerful it was initially judged too dangerous for carrier decks, and a legend twice over, first in the Pacific island campaigns and again over Korea. Around 12,600 were built between 1942 and 1953, the longest production run of… Read article
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Mitsubishi A6M Zero: The Fighter That Shocked the Pacific
The Mitsubishi A6M Zero was the fighter that shocked the Pacific: a carrier aircraft with the range of a bomber and the agility of nothing else in the sky, which swept aside Allied opposition from Pearl Harbor to the Indian Ocean. Designed by Jiro Horikoshi to an impossible 1937 specification, it bought its brilliance by… Read article
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Focke-Wulf Fw 190: The Butcher Bird
The Focke-Wulf Fw 190 was Germany’s second great fighter of the Second World War, a radial-engined design by Kurt Tank that shocked the RAF when it appeared over the Channel in 1941 and outclassed the Spitfire Mk V for the best part of a year. Fast, heavily armed and famously easy to fly, it served… Read article