Australian Military Aviation Posts
70 years of the Phantom
On July 25, 2025, the F-4 Phantom marks 70 years since the US Navy contracted McDonnell Aircraft Corporation to build two XF4H-1 prototypes. Ordered in 1955, just ten years after World War II, the Phantom entered service with multiple armed forces globally and remains...
Black Hawk Down Under
The Sikorsky S-70 is an American medium transport/utility helicopter family developed in the 1970s for the United States Army, where it was designated the UH-60 Black Hawk after winning a competitive selection process. Manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft, it has since...
Viper Zero: Japan’s Mighty F-2 Fighter
In the early 1980s, Japan’s government set out to bolster its domestic aviation industry by developing a new fighter aircraft from scratch. What followed was a complex decade of negotiations with the United States, resulting in a unique compromise: a Japanese-built...
F-47 Unveiled
On March 21, 2025, the White House announced the US Air Force’s first sixth-generation fighter, the F-47, with President Trump announcing Boeing as the prime contractor. Prototypes have clocked hundreds of flight hours over the past five years, developed under the...
Sixth-Generation Air Power
Article by Gregor Ferguson for Wings Magazine Vol. 77 No.1 wingsmagazine.org THE RAAF IS ONE of the first air forces in the world to field a genuine fifth-generation capability. And it could field a sixth-generation replacement for its fourth-generation F/A-18F Super...
Countering Small UAS Threats
Countering UASs - Summary of an article by Gregor Ferguson for Wings magazine. In an era where uncrewed aerial systems (UASs), have proliferated and flourished on battlefields from Europe to the Red Sea, the technical challenge now is not so much to weaponise UASs, as...
Before the U-2 there was the Bell X-16
Introduction In the late 1950s, the Lockheed U-2 entered service as the most advanced reconnaissance aircraft of its time. Designed for extreme altitudes, equipped with state-of-the-art cameras, and initially beyond the reach of Soviet defences, it was a technological...
Avro 707 & Vulcan: Britain’s Delta Wing Revolution
The 707 Test Beds In the late 1940s Britain, the delta wing and crescent wing were under serious scrutiny for the next generation of bombers. For the British, this was part of the atomic weapon programme, looking for a new generation of long-range bombers that would...
The Lost Potential of the Tomcat
In the 1970s, the US Navy would be elevated to a new standard. The arrival of the first Alpha model F-14 Tomcats in September 1974, and their first deployment to Vietnam with VF-1 and VF-2 signalled the beginning of a new era in air combat. Roughly coinciding with the...
The Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne | The Rise of the Attack Helicopter
The Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne: A Bold Vision Grounded by Reality The Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne promised to revolutionize military aviation as the U.S. Army’s first dedicated attack helicopter, blending high-speed innovation with formidable firepower. Born from the...
The Ilyushin Il-20: Soviet Ground-Attack Prototype of 1948
The Ilyushin Il-20 was a Soviet prototype ground-attack aircraft developed in 1948 by the Ilyushin Design Bureau, intended as a replacement for the Il-10. It came out of a 1947 Soviet Air Force requirement for a new attack plane with better performance and firepower...
Focke-Wulf Ta 152 – High Altitude Interceptor
During World War II, one of the most crucial elements of the air war was the ability to safely secure passage for bombers into enemy territory, strike targets, and get out without catastrophic losses. Early on, the Luftwaffe held the advantage, and from this...
B-36 Peacemaker
In the years immediately following World War II, the US operated a huge variety of aircraft, ranging from older prop aircraft like the Mustang and B-50 to jets like the Shooting Star and Sabre. Those who grew up in that era remember these designs fondly, and over the...
Operation Okra
In the early 2010s, ISIS emerged as a dominant extremist group, rapidly expanding across Iraq and Syria by exploiting political instability and conflict. ISIS originated from al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which capitalized on the instability following the 2003 U.S. invasion...
Bleriot XI
Sopwith Camel
https://youtu.be/1e0apwC3IlY?feature=shared
![Douglas DC-2, DC-3, C-47 [A30]](https://raafdocumentary.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/dakota-400x250.jpg)
Douglas DC-2, DC-3, C-47 [A30]
Handley Page O/400 in Australian Service
![English Electric/GAF Canberra [A84]](https://raafdocumentary.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Canberra-thumbnail-400x250.jpg)
English Electric/GAF Canberra [A84]
After World War 2, Australian aircraft manufacturing projects were in full swing by the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC), de Havilland Aircraft (DHA), and Government Aircraft Factories (GAF). Among the many projects was a replacement for the Avro Lincoln heavy...
Cessna 180 Skywagon in Australian Service
Bell 47G Sioux in Australian Service
![Lockheed P2V Neptune [A89]](https://raafdocumentary.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/01/Neptune-thumbnail-400x250.jpg)
Lockheed P2V Neptune [A89]
During the Second World War the Royal Air Force developed a radar equipped Hudson bomber to seek out German U-boats. These explorations into anti-submarine warfare aircraft led to the Lockheed PV-1 Ventura and PV-2 Harpoon which was a major redesign of the...
The Multiple Kill Vehicle
Several decades ago, engineers from Raytheon and Lockheed Martin developed a prototype for a flying weapon system—a pod-like craft—designed to intercept and destroy multiple ballistic missiles. Using small kinetic energy weapons, this system would be employed through...
China’s J-36 & J-50 – First Impressions
China’s New Tailless Jets It was on December the 26th, 2024, that images started to emerge from China of what appeared to be two new stealthy jets performing test flights. After a month, we still know little about these aircraft apart from what can be extrapolated...
The A-16 | Can a Viper turn into a Warthog?
If you were to choose an existing aircraft to be the basis for a heavy close air support platform, the F-16 would probably not be your first choice. Created with the explicit goal of being a lightweight dogfighter, the Fighting Falcon (more commonly referred to as the...
F-4X Super Phantom
During the first half of the 1970s, General Dynamics would attempt to modify the F-4 Phantom - the most used US combat aircraft at the time - into something even more powerful. With foreign interest as well, the idea was floated for a ‘Super Phantom’, and so the F-4X...
Combat Tree | The system that made the F 4 the deadliest fighter
In the early 1960s, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom arrived on the scene. Revolutionary for its time, the Phantom was fast, technologically advanced and multirole capable. From day one of the Vietnam war, the aircraft was employed with great efficiency, finding...
Don Pollock talks about Caribous in Vietnam
Don Pollock (retired RAAF Wing Commander), in 1964, joined the first RAAF contingent to Vietnam on Caribous. He has some tales to tell about those early days in Vietnam. A lot of “by the seat of your pants get the job done”, short or almost non existent runways,...
RAAF stationed at Ubon in the ’60s
RAAF in Ubon In May 1962 the Australian Government decided to deploy a squadron of CAC Sabre fighters to Thailand to bolster that country's defences. This action was undertaken as part of Australia's Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) commitment to defend...
J-20 China’s Answer to the F-22
In the 1990s, the Peoples Liberation Army Air Force was looking for a new fifth gen fighter. During the early 2000s a competition was run, known in the West as the F-XX program. The winner of this program was Chengdu, who’s design - the J-20 Mighty Dragon - is now...