An exemplar of a bitter, grueling land battle, Iwo Jima also saw prodigious air and sea power brought to bear as American and Japanese troops clashed over control of the tiny Pacific island.

American forces finally captured Iwo Jima — and its two strategic airfields — in late March, 1945.

Photo by W. Eugene Smith—Time for Life Pictures/Getty Images.

The Hindenburg trundles into the U.S. Navy hangar, its nose hooked to the mobile mooring tower, at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 9, 1936.

The rigid airship had just set a record for its first north Atlantic crossing, the first leg of ten scheduled round trips between Germany and America. (AP Photo)

Travis Rice dropped off via helicopter at the top of a mountain in Alaska, USA, on 2 May, 2010, footage from Red Bull/Brainfarm’s ‘Art of Flight 3D’ film.

A 71st Special Operations Squadron CV-22 Osprey helicopter is being refueled by a 522nd Special Operations Squadron Lockheed MC-130J Combat Shadow II on Jan. 4, 2012, over the skies of New Mexico. Photo by U.S. Air Force Senior Airman James Bell.

Experienced in desert weather flying, a British pilot lands an American made Kittyhawk fighter plane of the Sharknose Squadron in a Libyan Sandstorm, on April 2, 1942. A mechanic on the wing helps to guide the pilot as he taxis through the storm. (AP Photo)

Production line of the MiG-21bis fighter at the HAL factory, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Sunabeda, Koraput, India.

This HAL factory makes military aircraft engines for MiG and expanding for Sukhoi assembly line. It employs 6000 engineers and technicians, all are staying in the township next to the factory.

A Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird at sunset. Photo by Lockheed Martin.

The Horten IX V2, one of the experimental Nazi stealth prototypes that would have led to the production version Gotha 2-29, awaiting restoration at the National Air and Space Museum’s Garber facility, Washington, USA.

A Ho 2-29 prototype made a successful test flight just before Christmas 1944. But by then, time was running out for the Nazi’s, and they were never able to perfect the design or produce more than a handful of prototype planes.

30 foot, experimental sound mirrors in Denge, a former Royal Air Force site near Dungeness, in Kent, England. The mirrors were built in the late 1920s and early 1930s as an experimental early warning system for incoming aircraft, developed by Dr. William Sansome Tucker.

There are three acoustic mirrors in the complex, each consisting of a single concrete hemispherical reflector. This 30 foot mirror is a circular dish, similar to a deeply curved satellite dish, 9 m (30 ft) across, supported on concrete buttresses. This mirror still retains the metal microphone pole at its centre.

A French pilot makes a emergency landing on own terrain after a failed attack on German Zeppelin hangars near Brussels, Belgium, WWI, 1915. The aircraft, a bi-plane, has hit the trees and got stuck. Soldiers are climbing in the trees to rescue the pilot.