Military Aircraft & Helicopter

The history of military flying in the United States now extends over more than half a century. In that period, an enormous variety of aircraft types has entered service with the U.S. Air Force and its antecedent organizations, the Signal Corps, the Army Air Corps and the Army Air Force.

U. S. BOMBERS is a complete genealogy of the American bombardment plane from the original Keystone XB-1 of 1928, to the latest strategic bombers plying the skies today. Each of the numbered designs following the pioneer XB-1 is fully illustrated with photos and three-view general arrangement drawings. Also, the major features, including dimensio...

It was a little over eighty years ago that the first "heavier than air" flying machine actually to take off from the ground was built. A few years later, at the beginning of World War I, combat aircraft appeared and added a new dimension to warfare. At first, military aircraft were used simply for spying on the enemy. Very quickly, however, they...

The first aerial combats took place over France in World War I. In the earliest combats, known as dogfights, pilots often were armed only with pistols. If the planes carried bombs, they were aimed and dropped by hand. The earliest planes were built as scouts, not fighting machines.

The first military helicopters to fly with the American Air Commando in 1944 during its operations in Burma were experimental machines. But the following year the Sikorsky R-4s came into service with the American army for reconnaissance. They had been developed by Ivan Sikorsky’s company.