A final B-17 mission

84-year-old Marvin Skubick, a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot in World War II, took his final flight on a B-17 last month. According to wikipedia, "of the 1.5 million tonnes of bombs dropped on Germany by U.S. aircraft, 500,000 were dropped from B-17s."

A380 cockpit

Here's a controllable panoramic view of the cockpit of Airbus's monster A380 airliner

New leads in the DB Cooper case?

You never know when DB Cooper will crop up in conversation around the house - here's a recent article from New York Magazine with some developments.

Fleetweek in San Francisco, 2007

Some great pictures from Bernard Zee - they start out good and get really interesting toward the end. Check out the transonic oblique shockwaves as an F-18 flies just below the speed of sound about 20 feet above San Francisco Bay heading towards Berkeley on a bombing run.

The mighty do fall

The old Soviet aircraft carrier Kiev is now an attraction at a Chinese theme park. Isn't their space shuttle Buran parked in a playground somewhere? google... no, the static test model is in Gorky Park; the Buran that flew was crushed when its hanger collapsed a few years ago.

Heh - here's what Soviet websites would have looked like if the Commies had made it another ten years to the internet age (link to buran.ru).

Nice hobby

Art Nalls has one heck of a hobby.

"Dante would have been terrified"

Paul Tibbets died yesterday at his home in Columbus, Ohio. Here's his obituary in his home-town newspaper, and here's a lot more background at acepilots.com. Studs Terkel interviewed him in 2002.

Tex Hill and Robin Olds

Two great American aviators died recently: David Lee "Tex" Hill and Robin Olds. Here's a half-hour of story-telling from General Hill, and another from General Olds.

That beautiful sound

It's strange that the instruments of war should be so beautiful. Here's a video of an airshow this year in Blenheim, New Zealand, that featured seven Fokker Dr I triplanes, a Fokker D VII, a SE5a, a Sopwith Camel, and a Nieuport. You can find details of the planes here.