High above the speed of sound, said Designer Ed Heinemann and Pilot Bill Bridgeman, there is a new peril of the sky: “supersonic yaw.” As designers and test pilots pushed their planes up ...

Ed Heinemann, the lead designer for the A-4 Skyhawk, encapsulated the Skyhawk’s ethos with Leonardo Da Vinci’s phrase, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Indeed, the Skyhawk was ...

U.S. Navy experts had been highly skeptical of the claim of Ed Heinemann, chief engineer of what was then called the Douglas El Segundo, that he could build a jet attack bomber weighing half the ...