A century after they were first imagined, flying wings still look futuristic
Nothing says future of aviation like a flying wing. A century after they were first imagined, they still look futuristic. Probably because so few of them have flown.
Dieselpunk loves to stock the Nazi air fleet with flying wings designed by the brother Walter and Reimar Horten, but they weren’t the only pioneers in the field. America’s Jack Northrop, founder of the Northrop Corporation, was…
When the future of flight was faster than sound: supersonic jets that weren’t
Eighteen years after the last flight of the Concorde, supersonic jets are making a comeback. United Airlines is buying fifteen planes from a new company, Boom, which would enter service later this decade. Flight times from London to New York would be cut in half.
There was a time when the future of flight was supersonic. After the first supersonic fighter jets joined the air fleets of NATO and…
Norman Bel Geddes was an American industrial designer and futurist who had a major influence on the streamlined Art Deco design of the 1930s and 40s.
Geddes started out as a theater set designer before opening his own industrial design studio in 1927. His early work included such consumer products as cocktail shakers and radio cabinets. He quickly moved on to more ambitious projects, including…
In the real world, airships weren’t successful weapons of war. Zeppelins were terrifying but inaccurate. Navigation, target selection and bomb aiming were difficult under the best of circumstances. In darkness, at high altitude and amid the English clouds, accuracy was too much to ask for.
1916 British propaganda poster depicts a German zeppelin being shot down
F.A.B.! If you grew up watching Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s marionette science-fiction show, you’ll remember one of the greatest thing about it were the vehicles. In addition to the Thunderbirds machines, there were supersonic airplanes, nuclear-powered ships and spacecraft.
For the uninitiated: the 1960s series, set in the 2060s, is about a wealthy family that runs the life-saving…
In 1942, the War in the Atlantic was not going well for the Allies. German submarines, operating in “wolf packs” just out of aircraft range, wrecked havoc on Allied supply lines. In the first half of the year, the Allies managed to sink just one U-boat for every forty merchant ships lost. At this rate, Britain would soon run out of matériel to sustain the war.
Soviet engineers experimented with some unusual aircraft designs, from the bullet-like Sukhoi T-4 supersonic bomber to the Concorde lookalike Tupolev Tu-144 to the Caspian Sea Monster. Most never advanced beyond the prototype stage.
Here is a look at some of the strangest aircraft of the Soviet Union.
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