During the First World War, armies experimented with unusual methods of throwing grenades farther than a soldier could by hand. Before light mortars became dominant, engineers tested spring-powered machines, catapults and even centrifugal launchers. One of the strangest...
On December 27, 1944, Fifteenth Air Force B-17s went after targets around Linz, Austria, where German flak remained a serious threat. At least two Flying Fortresses were lost that day: 42-97575 of the 463rd Bomb Group and 44-6333 of...
During World War II, capturing a German weapon was only the beginning. The U.S. Army shipped enemy equipment back to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, where the Foreign Materiel Section examined everything from machine guns and artillery to armored vehicles....
By late 1944, Japan began using organized special-attack units whose pilots deliberately crashed their aircraft into Allied warships rather than attempting to return after releasing their weapons. The first successful large-scale attacks came during the fighting in the...
Before American bomber crews faced enemy fighters over Europe and the Pacific, their aerial gunners had to learn how to defend an aircraft moving hundreds of miles per hour while firing at another moving target. At U.S. Army Air...
What happens when you give a bomber tank tracks instead of normal landing wheels? The U.S. Army Air Forces actually tested the idea on the Douglas A-20 Havoc. The project began during World War II to explore whether aircraft...
In the 1950s, Hiller Helicopters developed one of the strangest military aircraft ever tested: the one-man Rotorcycle. The idea was surprisingly practical. After lessons from the Korean War, the U.S. Marine Corps wanted a tiny helicopter that could be...
By late 1944, most Allied armies were already pushing toward Germany. But Dunkirk was still in German hands. Instead of storming the heavily defended port, the Allies surrounded it and left the garrison isolated. One of the formations given that...
By 1951, the Korean War had increasingly become a fight for fortified hills and ridgelines. That created an unusual new job for some American M4 Sherman tanks: artillery. Near Pia-ri on September 18, 1951, Shermans supporting the U.S. 2nd...
On September 27, 1942, Second Lieutenant Robert F. Elliott of the U.S. Army Air Forces took off from RAF Llanbedr in North Wales in a Lockheed P-38F Lightning for a routine gunnery-training mission. The aircraft belonged to the...
The OV-10 Bronco was already built for observation and light attack, but the YOV-10D pushed the concept much further. Two OV-10As were modified into experimental Night Observation Gunship System aircraft. A FLIR sensor was mounted beneath an extended nose,...
During the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, German forces faced Polish Home Army fighters in some of the most intense urban combat of World War II. Weapons originally designed for other roles were quickly adapted to the streets. German archival...
During the 1950s, the U.S. Air Force experimented with a radical idea for stopping incoming Soviet bombers: replace fighter guns with huge salvos of unguided rockets. The F-86D Sabre Dog carried no conventional guns. Instead, 24 Mighty Mouse rockets...
On March 6, 1953, USS Oriskany was conducting combat operations during the Korean War when an F4U Corsair flown by Lt. Edwin L. Kummer of VF-124 developed engine trouble shortly after takeoff. Kummer aborted the mission and attempted...
In the final days of World War II in Europe, American B-17 crews received a mission completely different from the bombing raids they had flown for years: feed the starving people of the Netherlands. Beginning on May 1, 1945,...
When U.S. troops liberated concentration camps inside Germany in 1945, they did more than document what they found. At places like Buchenwald, civilians from nearby towns were ordered to walk through the camp and see the evidence themselves. Residents of...
Willard Custer believed airplanes didn't always need enormous forward speed to create lift. His solution was the Channel Wing—deep semicircular wing sections with pusher propellers pulling high-speed air across them. His experimental CCW-2 first flew in July 1948, using...
Before ejection seats, leaving a damaged fighter could be almost as dangerous as staying inside it. A pilot had to open or jettison the canopy, release himself from the cockpit, and physically get clear of an aircraft that might...
In the 1950s, France was racing to develop a new generation of supersonic interceptors—and few experiments looked stranger than the Nord 1500 Griffon II. Its secret was an unusual propulsion system combining a SNECMA Atar turbojet with a much...
On December 20, 1943, Charlie Brown’s B-17F Ye Olde Pub came back from Bremen barely looking airworthy. Flak had damaged the bomber before German fighters tore into it. One crewman was dead, several others were wounded, multiple systems had...
After spending more than two decades carrying passengers through the skies, three retired Saudia Boeing 777s began one final journey in September 2024—this time without ever taking off. The giant aircraft were dismantled and loaded onto specialized trailers for...
This wreck was not being inspected by ordinary Finnish troops. The surviving archive caption identifies the men as Swedish volunteers serving in Finland during the Winter War, examining a Soviet Tupolev SB bomber that had been shot down. Swedish volunteers...
The Hand-Cranked Grenade Launcher That Used Centrifugal Force #shorts
A B-17 Crew Bailed Out Seconds After Flak Crippled Their Bomber Over Austria #shorts
America Captured German Guns, Then Tested Them Like Their Own #shorts
When the Plane Itself Became the Weapon
How America Trained the Men Who Defended Its Bombers #shorts
The A-20 Havoc That Flew on Tank Tracks #shorts
The Tiny Helicopter Meant to Rescue Downed Pilots #shorts
The Czechoslovak Cromwells That Kept Dunkirk Surrounded Until Germany Surrendered #shorts
U.S. Tanks Backed Into Dirt Pits to Fire Like Artillery #shorts
The WWII P-38 That Keeps Reappearing From Beneath a Welsh Beach #shorts
The Marine Bronco That Became a Night Gunship #shorts
The Anti-Aircraft Gun Fired From Inside a Warsaw Building #shorts
The Cold War Fighters That Replaced Guns With Walls of Rockets #shorts
The 250-Pound Bomb That Fell Off a Corsair During Landing #shorts
The Day B-17 Bombers Dropped Food Instead of Bombs #shorts
U.S. Troops Forced German Civilians to Walk Through Liberated Concentration Camps #shorts
The Strange Plane Inventor Who Later Took the U.S. to Court Over the A-10 #shorts
How WWII Pilots Practiced Escaping a Fighter Into the Slipstream #shorts
The French Jet That Hit Mach 2.19 With a Ramjet #shorts
The German Fighter Pilot Who Refused to Shoot Down a Crippled B-17 #shorts
Three Retired Boeing 777s Took One Final Journey By Road
The Soviet Bomber Swedish Volunteers Shot Down Over Finland #shorts