As the Cold War arms race intensified during the 1950s, the Soviet Union steadily upgraded its strategic bomber and submarine forces. United States strategists began to fear that the Soviets might launch a successful first strike using nuclear weapons. The U. S. government constructed underground command centers to protect the national leadership and allow it to maintain its authority in the event
Shortly after Ship 1’s first flight on December 29, 1942, the tail boom was destroyed in a crash. It was replaced by an open inverted triangular steel-tube truss that would later become a hallmark of the Model 47. The design team then traded the skid landing gear for a conventional tricycle undercarriage. The tail was destroyed for a second time in a September 1943 crash. At this point Ship 2 had
In April 1941, Arnold was briefed on the Gloster E.28/39 jet-propelled test airplane and he watched the airplane fly in England. A W.1X turbojet engine designed by Frank Whittle powered the E.28/39. Arnold returned to the U. S. in May and briefed members of the AAF Engineering Division at Wright Field, Ohio, and the U. S. State Department. Efforts began to exchange information on this technology a
The Bellanca C.F. monoplane was the prototype of the first line of successful cabin monoplanes designed and built in the United States. Only one C.F. was built, but its efficiency and performance earned it first place in a succession of races in 1922 and 1923. The C.F. was only the beginning for Giuseppe Bellanca who improved the design and created an entire line of successful cabin monoplanes inc
Astronaut John Glenn Jr. carried these binoculars, manufactured by Hensoldt-Wetzlar, into space during the during the flight of Friendship 7, the first U.S. orbital flight carrying a human on February 20, 1962.
This biocapsule carried Baker, a female squirrel monkey, during the first flight to recover a primate from space. On May 28, 1959, an Army Ballistic Missile Agency Jupiter rocket at Cape Canaveral launched Baker and Able (a female rhesus monkey housed in a separate capsule) in its nose cone. Their biomedical condition was monitored throughout the flight as part of Department of Defense experiments
With the outbreak of war in Europe, Domenjoz took his new Blériot to South America, where he continued to thrill crowds with daring aerobatics. He would often perform extended inverted flight lasting more than a minute. Flying at Buenos Aires in April 1915, he performed 40 consecutive loops in 28 minutes. Such feats earned him the nickname "upside-down Domenjoz." He returned to the United States i