Military Aircraft

U.S. Army 1939. The first time a plane had been designed around a gun.

Produced for the U.S. Army Air Forces, however the Army Air Forces never used the P-63 in combat.

U.S. Army Air Corps 1939. Designed for a 1934 USAAC competition. The winning design was intended to be for a multi-engined bomber used mostly as a coastal-defense aircraft. The British Royal Air Force were the first to fly the B-17 in combat.

The Enola Gay is a B-29. Produced fom 1942 to 1946 for the U.S. Army Air Forces.

In production from 1947 to 1956 - for the U.S. Air Force. The B-47 needed defensive armament only in the rear because no fighter was fast enough to attack from any other angle. Every large jet aircraft today is a descendant of the B-47.

Produced for the U.S. Air Force. First flight was on April 15, 1952. The country's first long-range, swept-wing heavy bomber. In all, 744 B-52s were produced between 1952 and 1962.

Equipped with a boom for refueling other planes in flight.

Its first flight was March 20, 1932. The Peashooter could fly 27 mph faster than the biplane fighters. And climb faster. It was the fastest air-cooled pursuit fighter in the world. The last two models had fuel-injected engines. It was 23'7" long, had a wingspan of 28' and was less than 3,000 lbs. The machine guns were mounted low and shot through the propeller. With the gunsight mount it looked like a peashooter.

Its first flight was May 29, 1940. The "Bent-wing Bird" was flown by the likes of Pappy Boyington. It was the first fighter to top 400 mph.

U.S. Navy. The first American service aircraft equipped with an afterburner.

U.S. Navy. Swept-wing design with no horizontal tail. The wings folded up for storage on a carrier deck.

U.S. Navy. Set the national speed record in 1956 for flying more tha 1000 mph. Used by the U.S. Armed Forces until 1986. Used by the French Navy until 1998.

Most notable armament on the A-10 is the GAU/8 "Avenger" 30mm 7-barrel rotary cannon.

A shrinked "Sturzkampfflugzeug", i.e. diving plane

Has more than 609,000 lines of software code in its mission computers and avionics systems.

It is the only aircraft in the U.S. Air Force arsenal capable of launching the ASAT anti-satellite missile. The two-seat F-15E Strike Eagle can fly higher than 50,000 feet at more than Mach 2.5.

Has been used by Australian, Canadian, Spanish, Kuwaiti, Swiss, Finnish and Malaysian armed forces. Still in use today by the U.S. Navy as the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The Hornet has been used by the Blue Angels for more than 20 years.

The first American fighter of WW2 that was capable of escorting bombers from England into the heart of the Reich and back.