In March 1966, we wrote that the Northrop F-5 supersonic fighter (below) had been plucked from obscurity—it went straight from Air Force training grounds to the war in Vietnam. The F-5 had been developed a decade earlier to replace aging F-84s and F-86s in countries receiving U.S. military assistance; at home, though, it was eclipsed by “supersophisticated fighter-bombers” like the F-105 Thunderchief and F-4 Phantom. But the F-5s proved their worth when a squadron took flight in Vietnam.

When a Concorde jet on its way from Paris to New York crashed on July 25, 2000, killing all 109 people aboard and four on the ground, the event was not simply a tragedy -- it seemed a metaphor for the sorry state of supersonic air travel.