The North American P-51 Mustang was an American long-range single-seat fighter and fighter-bomber, and it began as the answer to a request for something else entirely. In 1940 the British Purchasing Commission approached North American…
The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is a large two-seat, twin-engine, all-weather fighter that McDonnell Aircraft designed for the United States Navy as a fleet defence interceptor and which proved equally capable as a fighter-bomber and…
The Grumman F-14 Tomcat was a two-seat, twin-engine, variable-geometry carrier fighter built for one very specific job: to hold off, hundreds of kilometres from the carrier, the Soviet bombers that threatened to swamp an entire naval force…
The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single-engine, fourth-generation multirole fighter designed by General Dynamics and built by Lockheed Martin ever since the former sold its aircraft business in 1993. Its official maiden…
The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet is a carrier-capable, supersonic, twin-engined, all-weather combat aircraft conceived as both a fighter and a ground-attack machine, hence the dual F/A designation. It was designed by McDonnell Douglas…
The F-22 Raptor, built by Lockheed Martin together with Boeing, is an American twin-engine, all-weather supersonic stealth fighter built above all for air superiority, though it also carries ground attack, electronic warfare and signals…
The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a family of single-seat, single-engine fifth-generation stealth fighters conceived not as one aircraft but as a common design rendered in three versions that share airframe, powerplant, sensors and…
The North American F-86 Sabre was the United States' first swept-wing fighter and the aircraft that carried Western air combat into the transonic regime. Drawn from a US Army Air Forces requirement for a medium-range, single-seat day…
The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is an American twin-engine, all-weather air superiority fighter conceived in the late 1960s and in service since 1976. It was the first aircraft the U.S. Air Force devoted entirely to air-to-air combat…