There have only ever been two female fighter aces: ‘Katya’ Budanova and Lydia Litvyak. These two Soviet air force pilots fought in World War II, battling Germany’s Luftwaffe over Stalingrad.

Litvyak was a lover of flowers, and she painted a white lily on the side of her Yakovlev Yak-1 fighter, leading to her popular title- the ‘White Lily of Stalingrad’.  Her good friend and comrade, Budanova, was a cheerful, energetic woman. For a time they fought in an all-female fighter unit, an elite force equipped with the Yak-1. Another operator of the formidable Yak was the Normandie-Niemen, a Free French fighter squadron (later three), that fought on the Eastern Front with Soviet forces. An official statement from this ferocious unit to the female Soviet pilots read:  “If we could pick all the flowers of the earth and lay them at your feet, they would not suffice as recognition of your valour.”

The Yak-1 spawned the Yak-3, -7 and -9, and if they are counted together as one aircraft type (there is more similarity between a Yak-1 and 9, than there is between a Spitfire Mk. I and F Mk. 24), it is the most produced fighter in history (as noted by Bill Gunston), with over 37,000 built.

Anna Morózova is studying history in Russia

 

Aeroplanes are indecipherable to most of us. They loom, like giant birds above us, ploughing through the sky like a tank through a garden fence. Unlike most of the people who read this site (I imagine), I don’t know how planes work. I even visited an exhibition about the Wright Brothers (in Rockford, Illinois) and came away none the wiser, despite there being an exact replica of the Wright Flyer II there, accompanied by a detailed diagram that let the visitor know exactly how the thing worked. “Whatever”, I thought, “it’s witchcraft”. I still feel like Conan O’Brien in his 1860s baseball re-enactment sketch, shouting “What ho! What is that demonry?” at a passing plane.

That’s why the simple, uncomplicated paper plane is my favourite form of flying vehicle [not usually used as vehicle- Ed]. They make sense to me, though I can barely fashion one myself. I know what they are made of and they travel at a speed I can understand. They are aerodynamic, a word I do not properly understand. Perhaps it is a memory of lost innocence although, to be honest, my school days weren’t full of carefree paper plane flying. That kind of thing seems to only exist in the pages of Just William but maybe we have a collective consciousness that, when faced with something like a paper plane, evokes happy schoolyard days. I can’t tell you too much about that but I can tell you that if I saw a paper plane now, well, I just might smile. Smile, and then cry for a childhood I never had.

Oscar Rickett writes regularly for Vice and has written for The Observer, The Sunday Times and Time Out, among others. You can read some of his articles here http://www.vice.com/en_uk/author/oscar-rickett and follow him on Twitter here https://twitter.com/oscarrickettnow

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The Walrus doesn’t look like air is its natural element. It’s an amphibian, but even the wheels look like an afterthought. No, it’s all about water; its star sign is Aquarius.

Is that surprising? It has a bilge pump, it carries an anchor. From its looks, you’d say Reginald Mitchell spent his holidays on the Norfolk Broads and was inspired to graft bi-plane wings and a pusher engine onto a cabin cruiser. It was intended for catapult launch from battleships, so he built it like one. You can loop a Walrus, but first check there’s no seawater in the bilges.

The small bomb load proved enough to sink a U-boat. But just as the Walrus was not quite an airplane, it was not quite a warrior. When the better, faster and meaner came along, it was given over to air-sea rescue. It found its true calling in saving, not killing.

For the half-drowned, who know hypothermia isn’t far off, a Shagbat was a blanket, a thermos of hot tea laced with rum, it was life. And when the weight of ten Americans from a ditched B-17 couldn’t be lifted, the pilot just pointed the bow towards England, and taxied home.

Jane Morton is a coder involved in an East-Anglian start-up technology company, and a sometime snowboard instructor. She likes flying boats and airships, especially British ones

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Have a look at 10 worst British military aircraft, Su-35 versus Typhoon, 10 Best fighters of World War II , top WVR and BVR fighters of today, an interview with a Super Hornet pilot and a Pacifist’s Guide to Warplanes. Was the Spitfire overrated? Want something more bizarre? The Top Ten fictional aircraft is a fascinating read, as is The Strange Story and The Planet Satellite. The Fashion Versus Aircraft Camo is also a real cracker. Those interested in the Cold Way should read A pilot’s guide to flying and fighting in the Lightning. Those feeling less belligerent may enjoy A pilot’s farewell to the Airbus A340. Looking for something more humorous? Have a look at this F-35 satire and ‘Werner Herzog’s Guide to pusher bi-planes or the Ten most boring aircraft. In the mood for something more offensive? Try the NSFW 10 best looking American airplanes, or the same but for Canadians. 

 

The Douglas DC-3 was the dominant airliner in the late 1940s, and it had a top speed of 180 miles per hour. Britain’s de Havilland company, in an act of incredible audacity, were working on an airliner more than two and half times as fast (480 mph).  This enormous leap was thanks to a hot new technology- the jet engine. However, the vast majority of airlines were not interested. The jet technology of the time offered superior speeds, but at a massive price, in both development, procurement and running costs. The new jet aircraft would be very expensive, so the air carriers looked instead to the DC-7, a super efficient piston-engined aircraft.

In 1949 the world fell in love. The Comet flew on 27 July 1949 and astonished onlookers with both its performance and its angelic, futuristic beauty. It entered commercial service, with BOAC, on 2 May 1952 and proved a triumph. Passengers were enamoured by its quietness and smoothness. Vitally, it was also turning a profit. Fortune magazine declared that “1953 is the year of the Coronation and the Comet”.

In 1954, Comets began crashing. An investigation determined the causes and an improved Comet was built. But, by this time, Britain had lost her lead.

Margaret Coogan is an historian specialising in post-war Britain

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The Fiat G.91 is the Kevin Bacon of European aviation: every military aircraft that followed can be linked to it very easily, normally in one or two degrees of separation. The Sud-Est Baroudeur is no exception to this rule.

Aeroplane designers hate wheels. Wheels are for cars. The weight and complexity of a retractable undercarriage is a huge nuisance. Why not do away with them altogether? The Nazi Germans were very keen on this idea and built a series of aeroplanes that took off from trolleys. The aircraft would uncouple itself from the trolley as it took-off, the trolley remaining behind on the runway. The aeroplane would land on simple skids.

A trolley take-off would free an aeroplane from the need for vast, vulnerable runways. It was far easier to achieve than vertical take-off and landing. And so it was that the Sud-Est SE.5000 Baroudeur (‘adventurer’) took its first flight on 1 August 1953.

It was superb. Trolley take-offs proved effortless, skid landings a delight (even in crosswinds). It could be rapidly rearmed and refuelled, and would have made a superb tactical fighter. A souped-up version was offered for a NATO competition, but lost out to the Fiat G.91.

 

Michael Fleet is currently researching spatial disorientation

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Any nation with the suicidal urge to invade the Russia Federation would have to answer to the Mikoyan MiG-31. At maximum speed the MiG-31 is uncatchable, travelling an incredible fifty kilometres a minute. Not only is it the fastest fighter in the world, but it is armed with the longest range air to-air missiles, the Phoenix-like R-33.

With the TKS-2 secure data-link a wolf-pack of four MiG-31s can share targeting data and cut a 800 km wide swathe of airspace. The centre of the weapon system is the powerful Zaslon radar, which was the world’s first electronically scanning fighter radar. The weapon system is highly automated; a test pilot charged with destroying four widely spaced target drones, commented that “It was too easy, almost disgustingly so.”

Weeks after an announcement by a US spokesman that the USSR was incapable of destroying cruise missiles in flight, a MiG-31 proved him wrong with an impressive live fire demonstration. For close-in engagements it is armed with the GSh-6-23 cannon, capable of spitting out 8,500 rounds per minute (the highest rate of any aircraft gun).

..and the Mikoyan MiG-31 is big. Very big. In fact a fully-loaded MiG-31 weighs around the same as six fully-loaded MiG-21s!

Alex Eybozhenko, painter & decorator

 

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The Bugatti Model 100 is a very sexy plane. Designed to compete in the 1939 Deutsch de la Meurthe Cup Race, it had great aspirations to break world records but like a lot of awesome things, it got waylaid by a fascist Germany and it never made its glorious debut.

When German soldiers marched towards Paris in June 1940, the Bugatti Model 100 was lowered out of the furniture factory where it was stored onto the street, and driven to the countryside where it would remain, hidden in a barn, for thirty years. Over time, it changed hands. The beautiful modified 50B engines were removed, and it was only in the 1970s that a restoration project got underway. Bugatti died before it ever had the chance to take to the skies.

All is not lost, however. In 2010, a pair of enthusiasts from Oklahoma set about making a working replica. This sexy beast will be in our skies later this year – and due to its light weight, it may still be a record breaker. The replica built will do something the original never could: it will fly. Better hope those Mayans aren’t right about the apocalypse.

Megan Orpwood-Russell is a writer and the Scientific Meetings Coordinator, ZSL London Zoo.  She also has a magnificent blog.

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A baking mid-July afternoon at RAF Fairford.  I shield my eyes against the bright sunshine. A British Airways Concorde powers uproariously along the runway.  Everyone around me (at today’s sweltering Air Tattoo) stops in their tracks to watch.  Her unmistakable delta form is revealed as she takes-off and climbs away. Smoke from the four Olympus engines smudge the sky behind her.

The silence that follows is as stark as the din moments earlier.

 15 years later: I’m sat alone in the ex-BA Concorde at Manchester Airport. An introspective silence in this now dead aeroplane. I think about the aircraft’s history and the people who flew it and on it. Sat in the captain’s seat, looking through the distinctive cockpit windows, I’m reminded that those flying on Concorde to New York saw two sunsets in one day.

 Two different moments.  One visceral: Concorde’s shape, performance and sound.  One reflective: Concorde’s glamorous life and her globe-shrinking powers.

 This was Concorde. A spectacular aircraft, yes, but one with an operatically rich tale: a drama of beauty, controversy and tragedy. Concorde was simply an epic, and true to this form, the tale ended in a tragic descent.

 

Mark Broadbent is a freelance journalist specialising in commercial aerospace, technology and aviation history (@markjbroadbent. www.mark-broadbent.co.uk).

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Let’s forget Boeing’s dark side– that its aircraft have killed more people than those of any other manufacturer: in the 1940s B-17 Flying Fortresses battered Germany; the B-29 Superfortress incinerated Japanese cities and made Hiroshima and Nagasaki place names we’re all aware of; the crumple-skinned B-52 was the dreadnought of the 1960s, nicknamed the BUFF (standing for Big Ugly Fat Fucker) it battered seven shades of crap out of North Vietnam

But as I said, forget this.

I don’t know if you’re white. I don’t know if you’ve had a homosexual experience, or whether you’re a Capricorn with a dirt-bike. What I do know is that you’ve flown on a 737. Everybody has.

Seven weeks before Sgt. Pepper was released, the Boeing 737 first flew. Since then, production of the airliner has never ceased. Think about that.

There are 1,700 737s flying right now. One takes off or lands every two seconds. They have carried more than 15.6 billion passengers. 737s brought in truly affordable flying, they have reunited families and taken millions of couples on their honeymoons. It is the most important aeroplane in the world and you should know about it. Google it.

 

Clementine Norton is currently single.

 

You may also enjoy Ten incredible cancelled Soviet fighter aircraft, Ten worst Soviet aircraft, Ten incredible cancelled military aircraft, Fighter aircraft news round-up,  11 Cancelled French aircraft or the 10 worst British military aircraft, Su-35 versusTyphoon, 10 Best fighters of World War II , Su-35 versus Typhoon, top WVR and BVR fighters of today, an interview with a Super Hornet pilot and a Pacifist’s Guide to Warplanes. Flying and fighting in the Tornado. Was the Spitfire overrated? Want something more bizarre? Try Sigmund Freud’s Guide to Spyplanes. The Top Ten fictional aircraft is a fascinating read, as is The Strange Story and The Planet Satellite. The Fashion Versus Aircraft Camo is also a real cracker. Those interested in the Cold Way should read A pilot’s guide to flying and fighting in the Lightning. Those feeling less belligerent may enjoy A pilot’s farewell to the Airbus A340. Looking for something more humorous? Have a look at this F-35 satire and ‘Werner Herzog’s Guide to pusher bi-planes or the Ten most boring aircraft. In the mood for something more offensive? Try the NSFW 10 best looking American airplanes, or the same but for Canadians. 10 great aircraft stymied by the US.