Dorito
This futuristic flying wing design is ready to bring in the next generation of carrier-based attack planes-when the Navy and its contractors can agree on a price. The U.S. Government has found a brand new way of debunking the notion of UFOs. It plans to build airplanes that look like UFOs. Admittedly, that's a pretty expensive way to make a point. And in fact the first of these projected UFO look-alikes, the A-12 Avenger, which was originally scheduled to make its first flight in March of 1992, has been canned because of cost and schedule overruns.
Fairey Swordfish
OF THE HUNDREDS of fascinating airplanes that are drooled over by Scale modelers, many can be found at private airports.
Part I: Aircraft of the Gulf War
ON JANUARY 16, 1991, the fourth major war of the 20th century began with an aerial assault that was at least as futuristic as Hitler's horrifying blitzkrieg on Poland in 1939. Heralded by radar-invisible Lockheed F-117 stealth fighters that blasted Iraqi communications and command centers with TV-guided "smart" bombs, winged cruise missiles roared from their launch racks on U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf and found their way to within a few feet of their targets.
New in the Sky
THOUGH THE very word stealth has only recently been acknowledged by the Department of Defense and the major aerospace manufacturers, the third generation of stealth warplanes is now flying. (And this isn't counting all sorts of still-secret stuff that's been out there flying for years.) The Northrop/McDonnell-Douglas YF-23A and the Lockheed/Boeing/General Dynamics YF-22A are in the air and getting ready for their competitive fly-off early in 1991, even if everyone insists it won't be a contest.
Bjorn Karlstrom
IF YOU'VE been a regular reader of American aviation magazines during the past three decades, the legend "Scale drawings by Bjorn Karlstrom" is a familiar one. From the hundreds of such publications in which Karlstrom's drawings have appeared over the last 35 years, the distinctive style of this Swedish artist is recognizable on sight. Yet who among us would know Bjorn Karlstrom if he walked through the door? Bill Winter, the venerable former editor of Model Aviation who was probably the first American editor to use Karlstrom's work back around 1950, has never set eyes on him or even spoken with him on the phone.
