The Swiss Panzer 68 MBT Was Obsolete Before It Was Even Produced, Then Things Got Worse
The Swiss Panzer 68 was Switzerland’s attempt at designing and building their own main battle tank (MBT), which is no easy feat. It was designed…
Lockheed nearly armed the U-2 with anti-ship missiles
The Lockheed U-2 has been serving the US silently at high altitudes since the 1950s. In that time, it has been used by the US…
The Russian Woodpecker: The Story Of The Mysterious Duga Radar
From July 1976 to December 1989 a strange noise could be heard on shortwave radios all around the globe. The signal was extremely powerful and…
In The Angolan Civil War, Angola Had An Unlikely Ally In Cuba
When Angola was plunged into a set of civil wars that lasted decades, the last country one might expect to join in might be Cuba.…
How The Bandung Conference Of 1955 Was The Beginning Of The End For Indonesia’s President
The Bandung Conference of 1955 was a meeting of Asian and African nations, many of which were newly emerging from colonial rule. It was an…
Kildin Island Incident: When a Russian Submarine Surfaced Right Under an American Spy Sub
Although the Cold War ‘ended’ with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the tensions built up over the previous 45 years did not…
Taking K-129: Howard Hughes, the CIA, and the Most Expensive Secret Plot of the Cold War
The Cold War was infamous as a time of bizarre weapons, vehicles, and projects. Because the US and the Soviet Union were not fighting a…
Rejected Prototype Aircraft That Were Given A Second Act
Not every aircraft that sounds great on paper actually proves to be great in practice. There are far more proposed aircraft designs than there are…
Impressive Facts About The ‘Losers’ Of The Space Race
The Space Race was a battle between the U.S. and Soviet Union that was fought with brains, science, and technology in the cold expanse of…
A Look Back At The Army’s Portable Reactors — Is It Time To Try Again?
In 1954 the U.S. Army initiated the Army Nuclear Power Program, which sought to research and design relatively small portable nuclear reactors that would provide…
Cold War Fun: A 1950s Science Kit That Contained Real Uranium
When the U.S. successfully harnessed the virtually limitless power of the atom with the Trinity atomic bomb test in 1945, it seemed that there wasn’t…
The XF-108 Rapier: The Air Force’s Best Plane That Never Flew
In the 1950s, the Jet Age was in full swing, and manufacturers were looking to make the biggest advancements with this new technology. High-performance internal…