When approached to develop a fast bomber, Douglas responded with the Douglas XB-42 “Mixmaster,” a decidedly unconventional, piston-powered design promised to achieve nearly 500 mph.

Scientist, aviators and military strategists have worked on creating useful jet aircraft since the 1930s, but it was the Cold War that saw the greatest number of jet experiments. The experiments ...

Q: In the 1940s, I worked as a draftsman for Douglas Aircraft Co. in Santa Monica, Calif. During my period of employment, the design and construction of an experimental plane called the Mixmaster was ...

Boom Technology’s XB-1 test plane. On January 28, 2025, it became the first commercial-type aircraft to fly supersonic since the Concorde in 2003. Today, for the first time since Concorde was retired ...

During the Cold War era from the late 1940s to the early 1990s, the skies above Southern California’s Mojave Desert served as a testbed for the newest, biggest, fastest and deadliest military aircraft ...