If you boarded a commercial airliner, at random, every day, it would be 100 years before you were statistically likely to be in an accident. And then, the odds that you would survive.

Thank you for posting this. It was SEVEN YEARS after the faulty repair on JAL 123 before the aft pressure bulkhead failed. How many inspections had it passed in that time? This is my pet theory, though there are reports of a heat flash being detected in the area of the jet, which suggests an explosion of some sort.…

Thank you.

Send her to my place after you kick her out of your bed.

That new building doesn’t open until June 2016, though, so plan your trip accordingly.

The Germans actually built two prototypes of this sort of jet, the EWR VJ 101. Both made successful flights in both hover and transition to forward flight, and the first prototype, the X1 (below), broke the sound barrier without afterburner. The second prototype was fitted with afterburners but the project was…

Yeah, I caught that too. But I’m glad I still made the cut. If they had asked for prototypes in the first place, this list would have been ridiculously long.

Actually, the badly damaged airframe that you see in that photo, BuNo 122479, has been restored, and is the only remaining example of the Pirate. It now resides at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, FL (above).

Fourteen inches of rain out near Elroy today, most of it in span of just a few hours.

An interesting comparitive design study between the B-32 and the B-29. The Dominator was clearly an aircraft of the earlier generation, a safe bet go-to should the Superfortress fail. The B-29, on the other hand, was a plane of the future, pushing the limits of what was possible with piston-powered bombers. I am…

And, the last American to die in air combat, though it was three days after the end of the war.

The Vought F6U Pirate, the US Navy’s first operational purely jet-powered fighter. Constructed of thin aluminum sheets over balsa wood, the Pirate was woefully underpowered, with its orginal engine producing thrust equal to only 1/3 of the aircraft’s weight. Even after the addition of an afterburner, another first for…

Interesting. I hadn't heard that, but it certainly makes sense.

You're not completely wrong, as the Buffalo was a complete bust for the U.S. And yes, it is a rather unattractive airplane.

With 94 confirmed kills, Ilmari Juutilainen was the leading non-German ace of WWII. Many of his kills came in a Brewster Buffalo. The Buffalo gets a bum rap because it was completely outclassed by Japanese fighters in the Pacific, but in the right hands and the right situation, it was a capable little fighter.

Give ‘em hell.

I’d love to see video of that flyby. Because you can be certain that somebody on the Reagan was filming it.

So, we’re back to barrage balloons?