In a heated wartime editorial, PopSci rebutted highly publicized claims that U.S. planes were inferior in speed, range and armament to enemy fighters—claims made by Major Alexander de Seversky, a WWI Russian pilot turned U.S. aircraft manufacturer. “It would be an insult to the dictionary to designate as ’military’ craft so deficient in the basic qualities necessary for combat,” he wrote in his 1942 book Victory through Air Power. We argued that each plane in the U.S.