The SR-71 Blackbird flew at Mach 3.2 above 85,000 feet, outran more than 1,000 surface-to-air missiles without ever being shot down, leaked fuel on purpose, and required pilots to wear actual pressure suits. Here are the stories — including the famous LA speed check — that make the Blackbird the most legendary spy plane ever built.
Bled’s famous cream cake is 7cm square, has five ingredients, and is younger than you think. The history, the border rivalry, and where to get the original.
Your St. Augustine Halloween guide for 2026 — every confirmed date, trick-or-treating, the Alligator Farm, and which ghost tours are actually worth it.
Halloween in St. Augustine 2026: The Candy Is on the 24th, the 31st Is for Grown-Ups Read More »
Jimmy Carter cancelled it, Ronald Reagan revived it, and the Cold War ended before it could fly its mission. The full story of the B-1B Lancer — the Bone — from the 1977 cancellation to Operation Epic Fury, plus the 2013 Montana crash and the cattle-road claim that followed it.
A medium bomber has no business taking off from an aircraft carrier. Sixteen of them did it anyway, and that was only the second-strangest thing anyone asked this airplane to do. At 8:20 on the morning of 18 April 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle released the brakes on a twin-engine bomber sitting at the extreme
He could not walk and he could not speak. They put the model in his hands anyway — and gave him back the thirty years the Air Force had taken. In the spring of 1980, a group of engineers from Northrop drove to a house in Santa Barbara County, California, carrying something they were not
The first stealth aircraft in history was built out of a Soviet math paper nobody in Moscow thought was worth classifying — and for most of a decade, the men who flew it could not tell their own families it existed. In the first hours of January 17, 1991, the sky over Baghdad was the
What the US Air Force and Navy actually fly in 2026 — MQ-9 Reaper, MQ-25 Stingray, CCA fighter drones and Navy underwater drones — plus how the law of war really applies, from a retired Air Force JAG.
US Military Drones: How a Spy Camera Learned to Shoot Back Read More »
The Curtiss P-40 was the fighter nobody wanted. Flown by American mercenaries on fake passports, wearing a shark mouth borrowed from an RAF squadron in Egypt, it produced one of the most lopsided combat records of WWII.
P-40 Warhawk and the Flying Tigers: The Story Behind Aviation’s Most Famous Shark Mouth Read More »
A field guide to WWII nose art — American and Allied. What the pin-ups, Disney cartoons, lucky cats, shark mouths, RAF colour-coded bombs, and Soviet dedications actually meant.
How to Read WWII Nose Art: What the Pin-Ups, Cartoons & Symbols Meant Read More »
Subsonic, gunless, and honestly kind of ugly — and for thirty years, the best all-weather attack airplane in the world. If you’ve ever read Stephen Coonts’ novel Flight of the Intruder, you already know the feeling — the one the book gets so right and the movie only half-captured: two men wedged shoulder to shoulder