Space & Aviation

General aviation refers to flights not flown by commercial carriers or the military; it includes everything from personal to business flying, air taxi, sightseeing tours, and life-saving medical flights and accounts for the vast majority of .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

As the ground forces of Nazi Germany swept into Poland and precipitated World War II, bombers of the Luftwaffe, the German air force, conducted the war’s first air strikes. This German Blitzkrieg led to the conquest of almost all of Western .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

Aerial attacks during the Korean and Vietnam wars involved limited campaigns waged with conventional ground weapons. U.S. military aviators provided close support and attacked enemy supply lines. Although air power did not play a decisive role .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

The airplane emerged from World War I recognized widely for its potential as a military weapon. After the war, United States military aviators advocated different roles for the the airplane in American defense. By World War II, innovations in .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

Facing a two-front war in Europe and the Pacific, the United States mobilized its vast human and industrial resources to achieve victory—a strategy that required the systematic use of air power. World War II became the global arena for a .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

Able to operate freely from nearly any place on earth, helicopters come closer than any other aircraft to achieving the birdlike freedom humanity has always envied. However, the same technology that makes this possible also prevents the .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

All the roles and missions of modern air power were defined during World War I and refined during World War II: maintaining air superiority, performing reconnaissance, providing close support for ground forces, ensuring logistical support, and .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

In the 1920s, visionaries in the United States, Germany, the Soviet Union, and elsewhere began developing liquid-fuel rockets with an eye toward space travel. Within a couple of decades, rockets and missiles had begun to alter the course of the.... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.