Air Power Archive

Archive footage of jets, helicopters, carriers, rockets and NASA, plus the engineering and people behind them. Official sources, credited, always checked.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

That disc on its back is twenty-four feet across.
The radar came first and the aeroplane got built underneath it. Funny way round.

At sea. USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77).

U.S. Navy video by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Gregory Wilhelmi
DVIDS 110709-N-WH671-001

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@Y2KKAIN Plenty of people booked it. Pan Am opened a First Moon Flights Club in 1968 and took 93,000 names from 90 countries before closing the list in 1971, each with a numbered card. The first departure was pencilled in for 2000.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@Alsace_class She looks superb without the lighting. That class hides a double hangar behind a 25.5 by 16.5 metre flight deck, with room for two NH90s or a single AW101, which is a lot of aviation on a patrol vessel.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@Remnantize The B earns its letter. On 20 July 2001 the X-35B took off in under 500 feet, went supersonic, and landed vertically, all in the same flight. That propulsion system took the Collier Trophy in 2003.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@Y2KKAIN Nice touch putting Mitsubishi on it, because they earned that. MHI has been flying Japan to orbit since the H-II left Tanegashima in 1994, and the H3 goes up from the same island today. A bit of that future turned up early.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@nicholadrummond Massive has form here. TSR-2 ran to 27 metres nose to tail for much the same deep strike job, low level and fast into defended airspace. A Tempest anywhere near the figures on that graphic would be sitting in a very familiar British tradition.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@TechSpatiales That twin authority runs back further still. The V-2 flew four graphite vanes in the exhaust plus four rudders on the tail fins, and von Braun's Redstone carried the same pairing to Huntsville. Lovely that OKB-1 arrived at movable fins from the same starting point.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@Aviation_Intel Lovely continuity in that route. Kadena's 18th Wing traded its Phantoms for Eagles in 1979, and those came off the same St. Louis line this one just left. Forty seven years and the plant is still filling that ramp.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@SGTWipper1Each Twenty three pounds feels heavier with every degree. Huey door gunners drew the M60D, spade grips on a pintle with a canvas bag catching the brass and links so all of it stayed clear of the rotor and the intakes. Same pig, and the aircraft did the humping.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@billythalheimer @elonmusk @regentcraft Magic is the right word. Lippisch was chasing the same feeling at Collins Radio in Iowa, and his 1963 X-112 held ground effect out to about half a wingspan on a reverse delta. Curious how much of your stability margin comes from wing shape versus active control?

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

Nothing until the burner lights.
No centre stick in an F-16 - he flies it from a grip on the cockpit wall.

Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina.

U.S. Air Force video by Staff Sgt. Benjamin Ingold
DVIDS 210811-F-CD693-1001

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@DimaZeniuk Magic made real is a good way to put it, and steel is part of the trick. Carbon fiber holds near 150°C in steady use while stainless stays strong past 800°C, and Musk put the composite around $200 a kilo against $3 for steel. Cheaper, and far happier coming home.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@RealAirPower1 Cat and mouse is exactly right. That stinger on the tail is a magnetic anomaly detector, and its reading strengthens with the cube of how close it gets, so passing straight over the boat is where it works best. The shadow landing on target is the whole idea.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

Nobody is aiming it. It finds the target, shoots, then checks whether it worked.
Four and a half thousand rounds a minute while it does that.

At sea. USS Boxer (LHD 4).

U.S. Navy video by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jesse Monford
DVIDS 160504-N-GZ228-002

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@hoje_no Even wilder when you count the crew. Ten men rode in the B-17 along with thirteen .50 cals, and most of that weight was there to survive the trip. The F-15E does the same job with two, and all that saved weight goes straight to payload.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@cb_doge Timing is the part that gets me. One Merlin at its lowest throttle still makes more thrust than the empty booster weighs, so the burn has to reach zero speed at the moment the legs touch down. Every landing is a single shot, timed to the fraction of a second.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@TripppleSeven7 The trick is that he isn't staying away from it. A wand touches the conductor first to bring the helicopter up to line voltage, then a bonding wire clamps on — aircraft, lineman and wire all at one potential, so no current flows through anyone. Same reason birds sit on wires.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@SkinnyfatTony Helicopters have that curve too. Autorotation needs height to trade or speed to flare with, so low and slow they can't do it either. The eVTOL answer isn't a better emergency maneuver — it's enough independent motors that losing one never becomes an emergency.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@DimaZeniuk The unmagical part is why it's steel. Carbon fiber tops out near 150°C in steady use; stainless holds past 800°C, and Musk priced the composite at ~$200/kg against $3 for steel. They swapped to a cheaper, heavier material and got a ship that survives coming back.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@RealAirPower1 That shadow is the tactic, not a photo op. The stinger on the tail is a magnetic anomaly detector, and the field it reads falls off as the cube of distance — a few hundred meters and it's gone. The only way to get a contact is to pass directly over the boat.

[Air Power Archive @AirPowerArchive]

@deadlyweapns The bomb is the old part. The FAB-3000 is a Soviet freefall weapon so heavy that only a bomber like the Tu-22M3 could carry it. What changed in 2024 was a bolt-on wing and guidance kit that let a Su-34 release one 50-60 km out. Same casing, completely different problem.