The Boeing YC-14, built in 1977 for the short-lived STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing) program. Its large engines mounted atop the fuselage near the cockpit, using the Coandă effect to boost lift and reduce drag.

On June 15th, 1945, F4U Corsairs and an F-5E Lightning carrying a cameraman in a converted drop tank strike Okinawa's hillsides with napalm and rockets, over two months into the battle and just days before it ended, marking the last major conflict of the war.

On May 12, 1987, a Navy Grumman A-6E Intruder (155657) of VA-142 missed the arrestor cable and rolled off the edge of the USS Lexington. Both crew ejected as the jet dropped below deck level. However, the unmanned Intruder kept flying and climbed away from the carrier. It later crashed in the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles south of NAS Pensacola, Florida. Both aviators were recovered safely.

Restored 1930's Footage of the von Baumhauer helicopter under construction and making tethered flights....then falling to pieces. Dutch engineer Albert Gillis von Baumhauer’s machine used a single main rotor, a separate-engine fixed-incidence tail rotor, and swashplate controls for collective and cyclic pitch. Long iron chains trailed from the frame to add stability, and direction stayed indefinite. On February 10, 1926 it held several feet up for five minutes. The British contest that prompted the project was cancelled after a fatal accident elsewhere. A fatigue crack in a rotor-blade hinge bolt destroyed the aircraft on August 29, 1930 after a half-hour flight the day before. The related patents were later allowed to lapse.

In 1930 a single mechanical mast on crawler tracks replaced hundreds of ground crew when the Graf Zeppelin landed at Lakehurst. The 60-foot stub mast locked onto the nose and towed the 776-foot airship straight backward into the hangar. It held the hull only a few feet off the ground where winds stayed lighter. The same rig had already docked the USS Los Angeles in 17- to 20-mile-per-hour crosswinds. 👀

On 23 June 1951, after already landing successfully aboard the USS Midway, George Chamberlain Duncan was catapulted again alongside Edward L. Feightner, who was testing a Vought F7U Cutlass. Duncan found he was carrying too much fuel for a safe recovery, so he jettisoned his tip tanks and loitered while Feightner completed six landings. On his final approach a downdraft aft of the stern dropped his Panther below the deck; the ramp strike split the fuselage, sent the burning rear section onto the fantail, and sent the nose section tumbling down the deck with Duncan still inside. His helmet and canopy were torn free. Crewmen pulled him from the wreckage with scorched ears and burns; he returned to flying duties six months later. 🫡

Footage from 1942 of a 317th FS, 325th FG, 15th AF A-20 Havoc making a belly landing at Air Corps, Foggia, Italy. The crew appears unfazed. Another day at the office.

On September 27, 1964, the British Aircraft Corporation TSR-2 prototype XR219 made its first flight from Boscombe Down in Wiltshire at about 8:28 a.m. CST. Chief test pilot Roland Beamont and navigator Don Bowen took the 89-foot-long white jet aloft with the landing gear locked down and the twin Olympus engines limited in power because of reliability concerns. The 14-minute flight went smoothly with no major problems, and Beamont described the handling as marvelous and close to design predictions. The aircraft was intended as a Mach 2 low-level tactical strike and reconnaissance replacement for the Canberra, powered by two Bristol Siddeley Olympus engines rated at 30,610 pounds of thrust each with afterburner and spanning 37 feet. Only XR219 ever flew, completing 24 test flights totaling about 13 hours before the program was cancelled on April 6, 1965. 🫡

West Germany's F-104 Starfighter fleet remains one of the Cold War's grimmest aviation stories. 916 were purchased in 1961, with roughly one in four lost to crashes. Grounded by late 1966, the jets were upgraded and continued flying until 1991, by which point 292 had crashed and 116 pilots had died, earning the aircraft the nickname "The Widowmaker".

The 21 cm Mörser 10 was Germany’s heavy howitzer that entered service in 1910 and replaced the older Mörser 99 which had no recoil system. Designed by Krupp, it weighed about 15,500 pounds (7,029 kg), had an 8-foot-5-inch (2.57 m) barrel, and could fire a roughly 250-pound (114 kg) shell out to about 10,300 yards (9,400 m) using a hydro-pneumatic recoil system. Germany had 216 of them ready when World War I began, and they helped batter the Belgian forts at Liège and Namur before the piece was eventually superseded by the longer-barreled Mörser 16. It broke down into two loads for transport and some received gun shields later in the war.

The LZ 127 "Graf Zeppelin" made history after construction began at Friedrichshafen in 1926. Built over two years and launched in 1928, the airship used innovative, air-weight Blau gas to maintain perfect buoyancy. Commander Dr. Hugo Eckener famously used the silver giant to defy Nazi propaganda—during a flight over Chicago, he intentionally banked the airship to hide a forced Nazi tail emblem from the crowds below, showcasing only the traditional German flag. After a flawless 9-year career logging over one million miles, the airship was grounded following the 1937 Hindenburg disaster and was ultimately scrapped in 1940 to salvage its duralumin frame for German military aircraft.

Upscaled 4K footage shows the multipurpose AC-47 gunship "Spooky" dropping leaflets over the Vietnam countryside before switching to firing down on North Vietnam.

Footage of an F-8J flown by Cdr. A.L. Alexander of VG-51 shows the aircraft losing its starboard gear and a couple of Sidewinders popping loose during a landing on the USS Bon Homme Richard, dated May 8 of '68 or '69.

Footage captures the controversial 1950 bombing run that dropped 850 tons of ordnance on North Korean front lines. A final shot shows a crew member loading a pearl-handled .45, its purpose left unclear - meant for the enemy, himself, or perhaps both, in case of a crash.

Everyone: "The Navy can't fly planes from a boat, lol" Navy: "Hold my beer"

Footage of MiGs shot down over North Vietnam with last clip of an NVAF MiG-17 struck in the drop tank by a 20 mm shell from Maj. Ralph Kuster Jr.’s F-105, June 3, 1967. In the final count of aerial combat credits and losses, US fighters in battle with the MiGs achieved an exchange ratio of 2.36-to-1. More than two-thirds of the MiG kills were by the Air Force, but the USAF exchange ratio of 2.04 was not as good as the Navy’s 3.68.

Footage of the Tu-144's first flight on December 31st 1968, which beat Concorde into the air by two months. The design proved unstable, with two in-flight breakups during its service life. It flew only 55 commercial flights before retirement.

On November 23, 1943, Ensign William W. Kelly put the first American plane down on Tarawa. His VF-18 Hellcat came off the USS Bunker Hill and touched Hawkins Field on Betio around noon local, 6 p.m. CST the evening before, on the last day of the fight. He buzzed the island, circled once, then fishtailed the F6F around Seabee bulldozers already grading the strip. The gear caught a rut, collapsed, and the Hellcat spun to a stop. Kelly climbed out, shook hands with the Marines who ran up, and asked if it was over. Pretty nearly, they told him. Wire reports gave the first landing to Butch O'Hare. O'Hare actually came in later, around 3 p.m. local, 9 p.m. CST, to look the field over as a divert for carrier planes.🫡

Pre-war footage from 1935 captures Italian "La Disperata" squadron bombers, led by Mussolini's son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano, preparing for a raid on Haile Selassie's Dessie palace. The tri-engine Caproni Ca.101s bombed civilians and a Red Cross hospital during the attack; the Emperor escaped.

The Vought F7U Cutlass stood out for its radical, space-age design, developed in the 1940s well ahead of its time. Despite its striking looks, the aircraft was plagued with reliability and performance issues throughout its service life. These are a few surviving color clips of the Cutlass from the archives.