Of Wings & Things

Air tankers have evolved since they were first used in 1937.

Flying a First Curtiss pusher biplane, Eugene B. Ely successfully made the first landing on a warship.

More than 200 Consolidated four-engine PB2Y Coronados were built, but the seaplane flew in relative obscurity as patrol bombers and long-range transports.

The U.S. Army experimented with the use of lighter-than-air blimps for a variety of needs.

The use of helicopters in the U.S. Air Force predates the Air Force as a separate service. In World War II, limited numbers of Sikorsky R-4s flew for the Army Air Forces. But with the separation of the Air Force from the Army in 1947, both branches of the military coveted helicopters to do certain […]

Popular history has a way of making icons of some aircraft and almost ignoring others. In the case of American World War I biplane trainers, the Curtiss JN-4 and JN-6 Jenny series of biplanes are undisputed icons of their era. But there was another American trainer of 1917-18 that all too often gets lumped in […]

If everything aeronautical seemed possible in the heady post-war jet age, some aircraft designs found where the limitations were. The Convair F2Y Sea Dart was one of four delta-wing jets in design or production by that San Diego company in the 1950s. Convair embraced the delta planform as its ticket to supersonic performance. But early […]

Long before entrepreneurs launched cars into space, pilots of the 1920s and 1930s were beholden to people of wealth who could sponsor record flights or offer cash prizes for the first intrepid aviator to achieve a specific milestone flight. Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon teamed up in an effort to be the first to span […]

That color stability has been of vital value to researchers and anyone pursuing color imagery dating back to before World War II.