Benny Kirk
1,727 ARTICLES
Cessna CH-1 Skyhook: The Forgotten Story of Cessna's First and Only Helicopter
5 Aug 2023, 20:28 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Let's be honest. It doesn't generally go very well when a fixed-wing aircraft manufacturer tries to build a helicopter. Just look at the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne if you don't believe us. Never before had so much money been spent build...
Step Aside Stratolaunch, the Conroy Virtus Had the Same Idea 45 Years Ago
4 Aug 2023, 11:43 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Does anyone else get the impression Stratolaunch is cheating a little bit when it comes to its "largest aircraft ever built by wingspan" title? Well, it's essentially two airliner fuselages fused together, is it not? One can only ass...
Lockheed L-100: The World's Best Military Cargo Plane Given Classy Civilian Threads
3 Aug 2023, 22:12 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / The C-130 Hercules and its family can do just about anything, right? It can drop tens of thousands of pounds of cargo, equipment, vehicles, and soldiers over any battlefield, refuel multiple aircraft at a time, conduct photoreconnaissance, strafe g...
Romania Wants To Revitalize Its Air Force With F-35s, They’ll Have To Wait in Line
2 Aug 2023, 20:47 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Last month, the mighty United States Air Force's 187th Fighter Wing based in Dannely Field, Alabama, played host to a nation that, at one time, was an ideological adversary to the U.S. many years ago. But three decades after the fall of commun...
Lockheed Martin's DRACO Nuclear Spacecraft Will Be Insane, Set To Orbit By 2027
2 Aug 2023, 17:17 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Nuclear-powered spacecraft are in the domain of science fiction, right? Though theoretically fantastic for bringing humans to other heavenly bodies, we're routinely told such tech is outside the bounds of what's currently possible. At lea...
Oopsie: Voyager 2 Probe Loses Communication With Earth After Maneuvering Error
30 Jul 2023, 20:13 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / After 46 years of hurdling through space like a man-made bat out of hell, you'd almost be inclined to believe the Voyager space probes will simply continue running trouble-free indefinitely until it encounters a flying saucer on its way into t...
The R35 Nissan GT-R Humbled its Haters and Earned My Respect, It Should Have Yours Too
30 Jul 2023, 03:08 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / A couple of weeks ago, I was driving home in my three-cylinder Mitsubishi, its miserable 1.2-liter three-pot buzzing as loudly as ever when a vaguely familiar black shape appeared in my rear-view mirror. I thought to myself; there was no way I was ...
Grumman Bearcat: America's Favorite WWII Navy Fighter Made Lighter and Better
29 Jul 2023, 21:18 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / As Lotus' founder Colin Chapman once said, the best way to make a vehicle faster is to "simplify and add lightness." As true as this was for sports cars and race cars, it might be even more fitting to apply this logic to airplanes. W...
Challenger 3 MBT: Is the Best Replacement for a Challenger 2 a Better Challenger 2?
29 Jul 2023, 16:36 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Like the works of Charles Darwin or your average game of Pokémon, Main Battle Tanks are constantly evolving. As far as British MBTs are concerned, most roads tend to pass through the all-time classic Challenger series. With that in mind, fea...
Boeing XB-15: The Story Behind the B-29's Long Forgotten Ancestor
28 Jul 2023, 17:57 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / We all know the story of the twin atomic bombings of Japan at the end of World War II. A bunch of brainiacs gather in the New Mexico desert and detonate a weapon unlike anything seen before; another group of brainiacs builds a plane to carry it, an...
Atomic Annie : The Full Story of the Most Bonkers Weapon in American History
27 Jul 2023, 15:17 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / You might rest better at night thinking the U.S. Military has a good handle on what is and what isn't a bad idea in a combat setting. Should America and its NATO allies start wrestling in the mud with a powerful hostile aggressor, we'd ho...
Here Are Three Hot Takes on the Sukhoi Su-57, One Might Surprise You
25 Jul 2023, 14:03 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / You either emphatically love Russia's flagship stealth fighter, or you laugh at every molecule of its construction. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of in-between in these two camps. But in the interests of complete objectivity, w...
Third Aerial Girls Squad: A One-Off Fighter Jet Anime That's Like Initial D in the Sky
23 Jul 2023, 04:50 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / I haven't been a big fan of anime for a while now. Truth be told, I probably won't be anytime soon. To my brain, so punch-drunk on Western-style animation, some of the tropes often shown in a lot of manga and anime just don't mesh we...
Gulfstream American Hustler: Half-Turboprop, Half-Turbojet, 100-Percent a Weird Idea
22 Jul 2023, 16:31 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / You know what multi-millionaire American business tycoons needed more than anything in the 80s? Besides luxury condos in NYC's Upper West Side, it was wacky, eye-catching business jets. What better way to flaunt your bank account than by flyin...
Mikoyan MiG 1.44: The Certified-Soviet Story of Russia’s First Gen-V Fighter Prototype
21 Jul 2023, 03:28 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Is there anything more time-honored in military aviation circles than poking fun at post-Soviet Russian jet fighters? It's like as soon as the hammer and sickle flag descended from the Kremlin, never to be seen again, Russia lost the ability t...
Very Large but Not in Charge: The Story of the Forgotten Douglas XB-19
16 Jul 2023, 19:55 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Bigger is better in the U.S. Military. Be it artillery pieces, missiles, machine guns, and, yes, airplanes. But what happens when an aircraft is so huge, so ungodly massive, and certifiably chunky that even U.S. Army Air Forces struggled to figure ...
You Can’t Upgrade the A-10 Warthog To Be Stealthy, but the Renderings Are Still Badass
16 Jul 2023, 03:31 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / If you're like us, you've probably seen a CGI graphic or two of iconic military jets like the A-10 would look like if they underwent a comprehensive redesign into stealth jets. There are even people out there who declare the best way to e...
The Abrams P-1 Explorer Was a Shutterbug's Dream, a Plane Built Just for Photography
15 Jul 2023, 21:21 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Every airplane, no matter how useful or useless, always has a purpose. Some fly hoards of sweaty, irritated passengers from tourist trap to tourist trap while supplying a steady supply of little bottles of alcohol for their troubles. Others drop ma...
The GMC Hummer EV Doesn’t Need To Exist, but Its Militarized Cousin Sure Does
14 Jul 2023, 20:01 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Okay, first things first. We know better than to think our opinions have any bearing on the set of four wheels you menace your credit score or checking account with. If you promised yourself you'd buy a GMC Hummer EV as soon as one hit showroo...
M1161 Growler: The Problematic Marine Jeep Designed for the Equally Polarizing V-22 Osprey
12 Jul 2023, 23:44 UTC · By: Benny Kirk / Even by the standards of the military-industrial complex, the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey Program took more time, resources, and sweet Benny Franklins than almost any single military contract in the history of aviation. The obvious expenses of making a...