During the Cold War, McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagles assigned to the 57th Fighter Interceptor Squadron "Black Knights" based in Iceland made frequent intercepts of Tupolev Tu-95/Tu-142 Bear aircraft transiting and operating in the GIUK Gap (Greenland-Iceland-UK). One several occasions the encounters between the Eagle pilots and the Bear crews got "interesting".

At night, the Bear-F ASW version would frequently use its powerful searchlight to try and disorient the pilot of an approaching Eagle. One Eagle driver took issue with this tactic- he zoomed ahead, turned 180 degrees, and while closing in on the Bear nose-on, lowered his landing gear and the Eagle's landing lights lit up the Bear cockpit, frightening the Russian crew. While the Eagle driver was reprimanded for his "innovative tactic", the Bears stopped shining their seachlights at the F-15s.

On another occasion, the mechanics of the 57th FIS created a fictitious EW pod by attaching all sorts of spare aerials and parts to a standard baggage pod. It was attached to an alert Eagle and when it went out to intercept a Bear, the pilot rolled out next to the Bear with the pod in full view. A battery of cameras suddenly were pulled out by the Russian crew to photograph this "new" EW pod.

The younger Eagle drivers with the 57th FIS would often spread a Playboy centerfold across the canopy when flying next to an intercepted Bear. Usually the Russian crew smiled back and waved. On one occasion the Bear flight crew repeatedly extended and retracted the nose mounted refueling probe in response!

Source: F-15 Eagle Engaged: The World's Most Successful Jet Fighter by Steve Davies and Doug Dildy. Osprey Publishing, 2007, p129.

In the postwar period three British turboprop aircraft vied to be the next DC-3 replacement- the Avro 748, the Handley-Page Herald, and the Aviation Traders ATL.90 Accountant. Only the Accountant (so named due its advertised "good economics"), never reached service.

Aviation Traders was founded in 1948 by Freddie Laker, one of Britain's foremost aviation entrepreneurs. His company dealt initially with the scrapping of surplus war aircraft and later moved into the modification of existing aircraft. In the 1950s Laker decided to take the company into the realm of full aircraft manufacturing. At the 1953 Farnborough Air Show, the company revealed a 28-passenger aircraft powered by two Rolls-Royce Dart turboprops designed to operate from austere airfields. A stretched version seating 42 passengers was also planned and a swing nose was planned to ease the loading of freight (which was why the nose wheel was set so far back in the design).

The prototype first flew in July 1957 but as Aviation Traders was not an established manufacturer the Accountant failed to attract any orders other than interest from the Indian Air Force. Laker didn't have the funds to continue supporting the project and he failed to find an established manufacturer to take on production of the design. The larger Fokker Friendship F-27 proved to be a dominating competitor in the market and after only five months of flying and 200 flight hours, the Accountant never flew again. It would be scrapped in 1960.

Source: British Airliner Prototypes Since 1945 by Stephen Skinner. Midland Publishing, 2008, p119.

By mid-1971, the Royal Laotian Air Force had thirteen AC-47 "Spooky" gunships on strength and were conducting approximately 50 missions per month in support of government ground units as well as the Hmong tribesmen in the highlands. Though superstitious, the Laotion gunship crews readily adopted the Spooky call sign but would not operate the AC-47s seven crew members as Buddhist tradition regarded the number seven as an unlucky number. As a result, RLAF AC-47s went into combat either with one man short (six crew) or one man extra (eight).

Source: Gunships: The Story of Spooky, Shadow, Stinger and Spectre by Wayne Mutza. Specialty Press, 2009, p183.

The powerplant of the Reno Unlimited Class racer Rare Bear is quite different from that of the standard Grumman F8F Bearcat. The Rare Bear has had the standard Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine replaced with a larger Wright R-3350 radial engine. Unlike the tempermental R-3350s that were used on the B-29 Superfortress, Rare Bear's engine utilized parts from R-3350s that were ruggedized for airline use- but since those engines were too heavy for air racing, only the parts that were absolutely necessary were used.

The supercharger was also customized using one from a Lockheed EC-121 Constellation as a basis. Since the Constellation's supercharger was designed for direct-head fuel injection, it wasn't compatible with the Rare Bear's engine, so it was modified to work with the Rare Bear's pressure carburetion system.

A stock R-3350 generates 2800 horsepower at 2600 rpm with 45 inches of manifold pressure. The modifications to the Rare Bear's engine gives it's R-3350 4000 horsepower at 3200 rpm and 80 inches of manifold pressure.

Source: Air & Space Smithsonian, November 2009. "The Bear is Back- Can an air racing legend win again at Reno?" by Preston Lerner, p45-46.

The successor in the skies over Vietnam to the AC-47 Spooky gunship was the AC-119 Shadow which often carried the nickname "Big Dumb Brother" which was derived from a little known USAF evaluation program called Project Little Brother for a light, heavily armed ground-attack aircraft suitable for counter-insurgency roles. The hope was the South Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) would be able to field this smaller gunship as well.

Based at Eglin AFB, USAF evaluators gathered a Cessna 337 Skymaster, a Cessna 206, a Beechcraft S35, a Piper Cherokee Six, all of which were leased from their respective manufacturers and retained in their civilian schemes. Also, a Cessna 0-1 Bird Dog and a Cessna 0-2A Skymaster were pulled from USAF training units at Eglin. Joining the mix was the American Electric Pirhana, a single prototype high performance attack aircraft weighing only 2000 lbs.

The Little Brother candidate aircraft flew missions over Eglin's extensive ranges with minigun pods, napalm, free-fall bombs, rocket launchers and various gun installations. The favored platform in the program was the Cessna O-2 and the proposed O-2C would have higher powered engines, armor/self-sealing tanks, a side firing 7.62mm Minigun as well as the sensors and electronics for a pilot and gunner crew to fly and fight the gunship mission.

By the early 1970s Project Little Brother wound down to a close, but the sensors and avionics developed would form the basis of the more capable night attack sensors that would end up on the AC-119 and AC-130 aircraft during the War.

Source: Gunships- The Story of Spooky, Shadow, Stinger, and Spectre by Wayne Mutza. Specialty Press, 2009, p61-65.

During the Berlin Airlift, the Royal Air Force used two Short Sunderland squadrons, No. 201 and No. 230, to augment airlift capacity by flying into Lake Havel (Havelsee) just west of Berlin. The Sunderlands were based near Hamburg on the Elbe River. They had a load capacity of 4.5 tons and were valued as salt carriers as their specially-treated airframes designed for operations in a sea environment made them resistant to corrosion. On the return flights to Hamburg, they carried manufactured goods and refugees, mostly German children.

Between July and December, when the Sunderlands had to stop operating due to the Havelsee freezing over, the Sunderlands flew over 1000 sorties, carried over 2500 tons of salt into Berlin and flew over a 1000 German children out. By the time the Havelsee thawed out in the spring, airspace saturation prevented the Sunderland operations from resuming.

Source: International Air Power Review, Volume 26. "Air Operations: Berlin Airlift" by Warren E. Thompson, additional material by David Donald, p168.

During the Vietnam War, the USAF developed a whole series of downward ejecting dispenser pods that were authorized for use by the F-105 Thunderchief, the F-111, and the F-4 Phantom, but in practice only the Phantom used the pods. The pods varied little in external appearance and remained with the aircraft but the submunition payloads were a diverse range of air-dropped area denial mines designed for use against vehicles and enemy troops.

The most interesting of the payloads combined the SUU-41 dispenser pod with what was called the "Gravel" mine. The Gravel mine was a small antipersonnel mine triggered by the pressure of someone stepping on it- though it didn't kill, it certainly caused ruined the foot. The mine was essentially an explosive laden bag of cloth with no type of fusing as the explosive was simply triggered by pressure. To keep the mine inert while in the SUU-41 dispenser, they were packed in liquid Freon and as such, could only be carried and dropped by specially-modified F-4Ds with monitoring equipment to use the Gravel mine.

The WSO in the backseat monitored the temperature of the ten payload bays in each of the SUU-41 pods. Once the Gravel mines warmed to a certain temperature, warning lights came on to alert the flight crew that the mines were "live" in five minutes. Ideally, the mines were dropped while still cold and as the Freon evaporated, the mines would go live. After a period of time, mine's explosives went inert.

Only a handful of Phantoms assigned to the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing at RTAFB Ubon in Thailand were able to use the Gravel mines.

Source: McDonnel F-4 Phantom- Spirit in the Skies, Jon Lake and David Donald, eds. AIRtime Publishing, 2002, p136.

The Grumman F-14 Tomcat was the first fighter aircraft to rely on a digital computer to optimize its performance, primarily through the adjustment of the wing sweep. The aerospace company Garrett AiResearch won the contract from Grumman to design the F-14's central air data computer. Garrett's previous work was the air data computer on the McDonnell F-4 Phantom II, which was electromechanical in that it used watch-like gears and cams in an enclosure two feet long and three feet high. The same feat would be replicated in the Tomcat on a 40-inch square circuit board. Engineers and scientists created a six-chip processor containing 65 kilobytes of data that flew on the Tomcat's first flight in 1970.

While Intel Corporation gets credit for producing the world's first single-chip microprocessor in 1971, Garrett AiResearch's microprocessor beat it by one year but it used six chips instead of a single chip.

Source: Air & Space Smithsonian, September 2009. "Road to the Future...Is Paved with Good Inventions- The Tomcat's Brain" by Linda Shiner, p27.

Weighing only 55 lbs and about the size of a bass drum, the first geostationary communications satellites were the three Syncom satellites built by Hughes in the 1960s. Syncom 1 was launched on 13 February 1963 atop a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. All communications with Syncom 1 were lost when the apogee kick motor was only a second left from its 22 second burn to put it into geostationary orbit.

Syncom 2 was launched 26 July 1963 and was more successful. After a month in near-geostationary orbit with the USS Kingsport in Lagos Harbor, Nigeria, acting as a relay, Syncom 2 allowed President John F. Kennedy to speak by phone to Nigerian Prime Minister Abubaker Balewa from the White House in the first satellite conversation between two heads of state.

Syncom 3 was launched a year later and reached true geostationary orbit in time to broadcast the opening ceremonies of the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo in the first continuous satellite TV broadcast across the Pacific. Syncoms 2 and 3 would operate until 1966, providing telephone service home for US troops in Vietnam.

The Syncom ground station dish was 85 feet across, cost millions of dollars and only had a single channel. Today's home satellite dishes are less than 2 feet across, cost under $100 and provide over 300 channels.

Source: Air & Space Smithsonian, September 2009. "Spin Doctors- How three engineers launched the comsat revolution" by Guy Gugliotta, p25.