The pilots, the airframes, and the flights that built modern aviation.
Aviation has more saved-from-oblivion stories per square foot than almost any other field of human endeavor.
Airframes pulled from jungles, glaciers, and crashed-and-buried wartime hideouts. Pilots whose names you know and whose names you don’t. Battles, airlifts, raids, races. The decade-long restorations volunteers spent thousands of hours on because the airplane mattered too much not to fly again.
This is the room where Taildragger holds court.
He’ll tell you about the B-17 that spent fifty years rotting in a Papua New Guinea swamp before a team decided it was coming home, the P-47 dragged out of an ice field in eastern Europe and brought back to flying condition, the Berlin Airlift candy bombers, and the women of the WASPs who weren’t recognized as veterans until decades after they ferried bombers across the country in wartime.
Pattern shows up when a historical lesson lands cleanly in modern training. Vector chimes in when a piece of vintage avionics deserves the engineering treatment.
Every restoration is sourced. Every famous-pilot story is sourced. When a date or a unit number is in dispute, we say so. Welcome to the hangar.
The Swamp Ghost B-17E survived 67 years in a Papua New Guinea swamp to become the most original Flying Fortress left on earth.
TaildraggerThe 16-year restoration of B-29 Superfortress 'Doc' from desert hulk to flying warbird is one of aviation's greatest preservation stories.
TaildraggerThe P-47 Thunderbolt Dottie Mae ditched in an Austrian lake on VE Day 1945, sat submerged for 60 years, and flew again in 2017 after a 12-year restoration.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle's 13-year restoration at Wright-Patterson required over 200,000 hours to save America's most famous WWII bomber from decades of neglect.
TaildraggerThe story of Glacier Girl, a WWII P-38 Lightning recovered from 268 feet beneath Greenland's ice cap and restored to flying condition.
TaildraggerSoviet bombers featured glass noses because the USSR lacked compact radar technology, placing human navigators where Western jets mounted radar.
TowerThe Gimli Glider incident saw a Boeing 767 glide to a dead-stick landing after running out of fuel at 41,000 feet due to a metric conversion error.
TaildraggerOn June 7, 1939, the Dixie Clipper made history as the first scheduled transatlantic passenger flight from New York to Europe.
TaildraggerHow a P-38 Lightning was recovered from 268 feet of Greenland ice and restored to flying condition over two decades.
TaildraggerEric 'Winkle' Brown flew 487 different aircraft types and made 2,407 carrier landings, records that will almost certainly never be broken.
TaildraggerSpitfire ML407 survived D-Day, decades of neglect, and personal tragedy to become one of the world's most storied warbirds.
TaildraggerBeryl Markham made the first solo east-to-west Atlantic crossing in 1936, flying against prevailing winds with only a compass and a thermos of coffee.
TaildraggerHow a Pan Am crew flew a Boeing 314 flying boat around the world in 1941 after Pearl Harbor left them stranded in the Pacific.
TaildraggerHow the Grumman F6F Hellcat went from prototype to 12,275 fighters built, achieving a 19:1 kill ratio that broke Japanese naval aviation.
TaildraggerOn June 5, 1944, over 800 C-47 crews flew paratroopers into Normandy through flak and cloud, launching the D-Day invasion.
TaildraggerHow Japanese ace Saburo Sakai flew 560 miles home after taking a bullet to the skull over Guadalcanal in 1942.
TaildraggerFlak Bait, the most battle-damaged American bomber to survive WWII, flew 207 missions and took over 1,000 flak holes before its painstaking Smithsonian restoration.
TaildraggerIn 1958, Bob Timm and John Cook kept a Cessna 172 airborne over Las Vegas for 64 days, setting a record that still stands.
TaildraggerHow Douglas Corrigan pulled off aviation's greatest stunt by 'accidentally' flying to Ireland instead of California in 1938.
TaildraggerWiley Post lost an eye in an oil field accident, then flew around the world twice and invented the pressure suit.
TaildraggerThe Vought F4U Corsair was rejected by the Navy for carrier use but became the Pacific's deadliest fighter with an 11-to-1 kill ratio.
TaildraggerOn June 4, 1783, the Montgolfier brothers launched the first public hot air balloon flight in Annonay, France, launching the age of human flight.
TaildraggerThe Kee Bird B-29 sat on a frozen Greenland lake for 48 years before a team nearly flew her home — then lost her to fire.
TaildraggerNoel Wien's 1924 flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks in an open-cockpit biplane changed Alaska forever.
TaildraggerOn November 23, 1944, a crewless B-17 Flying Fortress flew itself from Germany to Belgium and landed intact in a farmer's field.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito was a wooden WWII bomber so fast it needed no guns, becoming the most versatile Allied combat aircraft.
TaildraggerThe story of Swamp Ghost, a B-17E bomber lost in a Papua New Guinea swamp in 1942 and recovered 64 years later for display at Pearl Harbor.
TaildraggerHow Eddie Rickenbacker, America's WWI Ace of Aces, survived 24 days adrift in the Pacific in 1942.
TaildraggerThe 1962 crash of Air France Flight 007 at Orly killed 130 people, including 106 Atlanta art patrons, and reshaped a city's cultural identity.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle's 13-year, 55,000-hour restoration returned America's most famous WWII bomber to her mission-25 condition.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito was a wooden WWII bomber that outran fighters and changed aerial warfare despite being rejected by the Air Ministry.
TaildraggerThe true story of an F-106 Delta Dart that recovered from a flat spin and landed itself in a Montana field after its pilot ejected.
TaildraggerMax Conrad crossed the Atlantic dozens of times in Piper Comanches, setting world records that proved light aircraft could go anywhere.
TaildraggerJackie Cochran rose from barefoot poverty to become the most decorated female pilot in history, breaking the sound barrier and leading the WASP program.
TaildraggerOn June 2, 1910, Charles Rolls completed the first nonstop round-trip flight across the English Channel—and died flying 39 days later.
TaildraggerThomas Fitzpatrick stole a plane twice to land on a Manhattan street and win bar bets in 1956 and 1958.
TaildraggerThe Focke-Wulf 190 first flew on June 1, 1939, and became one of WWII's most feared fighters thanks to Kurt Tank's radical radial-engine design.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito was a WWII bomber built from wood that outran every fighter in the sky and became the war's most versatile aircraft.
TaildraggerHow test pilot Tex Johnston's barrel roll of Boeing's Dash 80 over Lake Washington in 1955 launched the commercial jet age.
TaildraggerThe 16-year restoration of B-29 Doc transformed a desert hulk into one of only two flying Superfortresses in the world.
TaildraggerWilbur Wright, the quiet genius behind powered flight, died of typhoid fever on May 30, 1912, at just forty-five years old.
TaildraggerThe midnight demolition of Chicago's Meigs Field in 2003 remains general aviation's most brazen political attack on a public-use airport.
TaildraggerThe incredible true story of Glacier Girl, a P-38 Lightning recovered from 268 feet of Greenland ice and restored to flying condition.
TaildraggerThe Lady Be Good, a B-24 Liberator lost in 1943, was found perfectly preserved in the Libyan desert 15 years later with no crew aboard.
TaildraggerHow 1,400 shipyard workers repaired USS Yorktown in 72 hours, giving the Navy the third carrier that won the Battle of Midway.
TaildraggerA ranked look at the five most powerful US Navy aircraft carriers ever built, from the postwar Midway class to the electromagnetic-launch Ford class.
TowerIn 1958, Bob Timm and John Cook kept a stock Cessna 172 airborne over Las Vegas for 64 days, a record that still stands today.
TaildraggerBeryl Markham's 1936 solo westbound Atlantic crossing in a Vega Gull remains one of aviation's most daring flights.
TaildraggerOn May 28, 1940, RAF fighters fought and died over Dunkirk in battles the soldiers below never saw.
TaildraggerThe Night Witches flew 23,000 combat sorties in plywood biplanes, becoming one of WWII's most feared bomber units.
TaildraggerHow Tex Johnston's barrel roll of the Boeing Dash 80 over Lake Washington in 1955 changed commercial aviation forever.
TaildraggerPancho Barnes built the Happy Bottom Riding Club at the edge of Edwards AFB, where America's greatest test pilots found refuge during aviation's most dangerous era.
TaildraggerOn May 28, 1987, teenager Mathias Rust flew a rented Cessna 172 over 550 miles of Soviet airspace and landed in Red Square.
TaildraggerFrom the de Havilland Comet to the Boeing 737 MAX, these controversial aircraft exposed deadly flaws that reshaped aviation safety forever.
TowerThe Schneider Trophy seaplane races of the 1920s and 1930s directly produced the Spitfire's elliptical wing, Merlin engine, and cooling system.
TaildraggerHow sixteen P-38 Lightnings flew 400 miles at wave-top height to intercept and kill Admiral Yamamoto in 1943.
TaildraggerOn May 27, 1958, the McDonnell F-4 Phantom made its first flight — an unwanted jet that became the defining fighter of a generation.
TaildraggerDozens of WWII warbirds rest on Lake Michigan's bottom, sunk during carrier training near Chicago and now being recovered and restored to fly.
TaildraggerPancho Barnes built the Happy Bottom Riding Club, where test pilots like Chuck Yeager gathered at the edge of the sound barrier.
TaildraggerHow pilot Gail Halvorsen's two sticks of gum sparked Operation Little Vittles during the 1948 Berlin Airlift.
TaildraggerEight aircraft defined supersonic flight from Chuck Yeager's Mach 1 in 1947 to the X-15's Mach 6.7 record that still stands today.
TowerDouglas Corrigan flew from Brooklyn to Dublin in 1938, claiming a compass error on his California flight plan.
TaildraggerWiley Post lost an eye in an oil field accident, then set two around-the-world records and invented the pressure suit.
TaildraggerOn May 26, 1970, the Tupolev Tu-144 became the first commercial transport aircraft to reach Mach 2, a milestone in the Cold War supersonic race.
TaildraggerHow a crashed Japanese Zero in Alaska's Aleutian Islands gave Grumman the intelligence to build the F6F Hellcat and turn the Pacific air war.
TaildraggerThe Gee Bee Super Sportster was a radical 1930s racer built for pure speed in a shoe factory—and it killed nearly every pilot who flew it.
TaildraggerThe true story of an unmanned F-106 Delta Dart that recovered from a flat spin and landed itself in a Montana field in 1970.
TaildraggerHow volunteers rescued the B-29 Fifi from a Navy bombing range and restored her to flying condition against impossible odds.
TaildraggerThe full story of the Gimli Glider, the Boeing 767 that ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet and glided to a dead-stick landing in 1983.
TaildraggerThe Swamp Ghost B-17 sat in a Papua New Guinea swamp for 64 years before a dramatic recovery brought it to Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.
TaildraggerMax Conrad flew a Piper Comanche across the Atlantic over 100 times and set a 7,100-mile solo record that still astounds pilots.
TaildraggerHow Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947 with two broken ribs and a sawed-off broomstick.
TaildraggerThomas Fitzpatrick stole two airplanes and landed them on a Manhattan street two years apart to win bar bets.
TaildraggerHow Robin Olds masterminded Operation Bolo, the brilliant 1967 ambush that destroyed half of North Vietnam's MiG-21 fleet in twelve minutes.
TaildraggerThe Kee Bird B-29 survived 48 years on a frozen Greenland lake only to burn minutes before its rescue flight in 1995.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle's 13-year restoration at Wright-Patterson AFB saved America's most famous WWII bomber from decades of decay.
TaildraggerEugene Bullard, America's first Black combat pilot, had to leave his country and fly for France to earn his wings.
TaildraggerAmy Johnson flew solo from England to Australia in 1930 with just 75 hours of flight time in a de Havilland Gipsy Moth named Jason.
TaildraggerThe Night Witches were Soviet women who flew obsolete biplanes on daring nighttime bombing raids against German forces from 1942 to 1945.
TaildraggerThe Navy Curtiss NC-4 completed the first transatlantic flight on May 22, 1919, a milestone most people wrongly attribute to later aviators.
TaildraggerThe Gimli Glider incident turned a Boeing 767 into history's largest glider after a metric conversion error left it without fuel at 41,000 feet.
TaildraggerHow bush pilot Jimmy Angel crash-landed on a Venezuelan mesa in 1937 and accidentally gave the world's tallest waterfall its name.
TaildraggerJackie Cochran rose from poverty to hold more aviation records than any pilot in history, male or female.
TaildraggerThe B-29 Superfortress 'Doc' was rescued from a desert boneyard and restored to flight over 16 years by volunteers in Wichita, Kansas.
TaildraggerThe B-52 Stratofortress has survived 15 retirement proposals and will fly past 2040 thanks to cost, versatility, and a massive upgrade program.
TowerHow test pilot Tex Johnston's unauthorized barrel roll over Lake Washington in 1955 helped launch the Boeing 707 and the jet age.
TaildraggerHurricane R4118, a Battle of Britain combat veteran with 49 sorties, was recovered from India and restored to airworthy condition.
TaildraggerOn May 21, 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, landing in Ireland after nearly 15 harrowing hours.
TaildraggerWhiskey Seven, a D-Day C-47, was restored by volunteers and flew back to Normandy 70 years later to drop paratroopers over the same fields.
TaildraggerOn May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh departed Roosevelt Field in the Spirit of Saint Louis for the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight.
TaildraggerBessie Coleman became the world's first Black woman to earn a pilot's license by traveling to France after every U.S. flight school rejected her.
TaildraggerThe Vought F4U Corsair's iconic bent wings solved an engineering problem and created the Pacific's deadliest fighter.
TaildraggerThe B-24 Lady Be Good vanished over Libya in 1943 and was found 16 years later in the Sahara, perfectly preserved with working radios.
TaildraggerPancho Barnes ran the Happy Bottom Riding Club, the legendary desert bar where America's test pilots drank free after breaking records.
TaildraggerOn May 19, 1919, Harry Hawker and Kenneth Mackenzie-Grieve ditched in the North Atlantic, failing to cross but proving it could be done.
TaildraggerBeryl Markham became the first woman to fly solo westbound across the Atlantic in 1936, a feat harder than Lindbergh's or Earhart's crossings.
TaildraggerDouglas Corrigan 'accidentally' flew from New York to Ireland in 1938 after being denied permission three times.
TaildraggerThe 1980 Mount Saint Helens eruption exposed aviation's vulnerability to volcanic ash and sparked the global warning systems pilots rely on today.
TaildraggerThe Bristol Blenheim flew Britain's first offensive mission of WWII, then vanished — until one man spent 31 years bringing her back.
TaildraggerIn 1987, 19-year-old Mathias Rust flew a rented Cessna 172 through Soviet airspace and landed near the Kremlin, changing Cold War history.
TaildraggerMajor Richard 'Dick' Bong scored 40 aerial victories in WWII, becoming America's all-time Ace of Aces.
TaildraggerAlcock and Brown completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight in June 1919, eight years before Lindbergh, in an open-cockpit biplane.
TaildraggerThe B-26 Marauder went from the most feared bomber in the Army Air Forces to the lowest combat loss rate of any American bomber in Europe.
TaildraggerThe Bermuda Sky Queen's 1947 emergency ocean landing saved 69 lives but was overshadowed by Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier the same day.
TaildraggerThe story of Swamp Ghost, a B-17E recovered from a Papua New Guinea swamp 67 years after its 1942 crash landing.
TaildraggerA B-17 bomber flew over 100 miles and landed in a Belgian field in 1944 with no crew aboard after all hands bailed out over Germany.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle's 13-year restoration at Wright-Patterson required thousands of decisions to save a B-17 America nearly let disintegrate.
TaildraggerChuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, flying the Bell X-1 past Mach 1 with two broken ribs and a broomstick lever.
TaildraggerWiley Post lost an eye in an oil field, flew around the world twice, and discovered the jet stream that every airline uses today.
TaildraggerThomas Fitzpatrick stole airplanes twice from Teterboro and landed them on Manhattan streets to win bar bets in 1956 and 1958.
TaildraggerHow the Grumman F6F Hellcat was engineered from captured Zero data to dominate the Pacific air war with a 19-to-1 kill ratio.
TaildraggerThe last surviving Dornier Do 17, a WWII German bomber, was recovered from the English Channel in 2013 after 73 years underwater.
TaildraggerHow the Schneider Trophy seaplane races of the 1920s and 1930s directly produced the Spitfire and its Merlin engine.
TaildraggerThe Navy's MQ-25 Stingray lets F/A-18 pilots command an unmanned aircraft from their own cockpit, reshaping carrier aviation.
TowerHow test pilot Tex Johnston's barrel roll of Boeing's prototype jet airliner over Lake Washington changed aviation history.
TaildraggerHow sixteen P-38 Lightnings flew 400 miles on dead reckoning to intercept and kill Admiral Yamamoto in April 1943.
TaildraggerMax Conrad made over 200 solo ocean crossings in single-engine Pipers, earning the title Flying Grandfather.
TaildraggerHow 300,000 hours of volunteer labor brought B-29 Doc from a desert hulk to the second flying Superfortress in the world.
TaildraggerOn May 14, 1908, mechanic Charlie Furnas became the first airplane passenger in America at Kill Devil Hills, NC.
TaildraggerAntoine de Saint-Exupéry flew mail routes over the Sahara and Andes before writing The Little Prince, then vanished over the Mediterranean in 1944.
TaildraggerThe true story of the F-106 Delta Dart that recovered from a flat spin and landed itself in a Montana field after its pilot ejected.
TaildraggerThe Kee Bird B-29 survived 48 years on a frozen Greenland lake only to burn during its rescue attempt moments before takeoff.
TaildraggerJimmy Stewart flew twenty combat missions over Nazi Germany in a B-24 Liberator, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross twice.
TaildraggerJackie Cochran rose from barefoot poverty to become the fastest woman alive, breaking the sound barrier and founding the WASP program.
TaildraggerOn May 13, 1913, Igor Sikorsky flew the first four-engine airplane, defying experts who called multi-engine flight impossible.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito, built from wood and rejected by the Air Ministry, became WWII's most versatile combat aircraft.
TaildraggerA Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk sat untouched in the Egyptian Sahara for 70 years after its pilot vanished, sparking a fierce restoration debate.
TaildraggerThe Berlin Airlift delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies over 277,000 flights, ending when the Soviet blockade lifted on May 12, 1949.
TaildraggerPancho Barnes built the Happy Bottom Riding Club, where Cold War test pilots like Chuck Yeager turned hangar flying into an art form.
TaildraggerIn 1959, Bob Timm and John Cook set an unbroken world record by flying a Cessna 172 for 64 days straight over Las Vegas.
TaildraggerThe story of Wellington bomber N2980, ditched in Loch Ness in 1940 and recovered 45 years later as the best surviving example of its type.
TaildraggerThe full story of the Gimli Glider, the Air Canada Boeing 767 that ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet and glided to a deadstick landing in 1983.
TaildraggerThe Doolittle Raid launched sixteen B-25 bombers from a carrier deck to strike Tokyo, changing the course of the Pacific War.
TaildraggerOn May 11, 1926, the airship Norge completed the first verified flight across the North Pole, crossing from Europe to Alaska.
TaildraggerBob Timm and John Cook flew a Cessna 172 for 64 days over Las Vegas in 1958-59, setting an endurance record that still stands.
TaildraggerBessie Coleman crossed the Atlantic to earn her pilot's license after every U.S. flight school refused to teach a Black woman to fly.
TaildraggerWhiskey Seven, a D-Day C-47 that dropped paratroopers over Normandy in 1944, was restored and flew the same mission 70 years later.
TaildraggerOn May 10, 1941, Rudolf Hess flew a Messerschmitt Bf 110 solo from Germany to Scotland in one of aviation's most bizarre unauthorized missions.
TaildraggerDouglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 crash, then became one of the RAF's deadliest fighter aces in World War II.
TaildraggerHow a band of American test pilots raced across defeated Germany to seize Hitler's secret jets before the Soviets could claim them.
TaildraggerSwamp Ghost, a B-17E that crash-landed in Papua New Guinea in 1942, survived 64 years in a swamp before its extraordinary recovery.
TaildraggerHow Saburo Sakai flew a Zero 560 miles home with a bullet in his skull, blind in one eye, and survived.
TaildraggerHow a secret civilian racer from Wichita humiliated every military fighter at the 1929 Cleveland Air Races and changed American aviation.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle's thirteen-year restoration preserved combat scars from 25 missions over occupied Europe.
TaildraggerThe Lady Be Good, a B-24 Liberator lost in 1943, sat perfectly preserved in the Sahara for 15 years before discovery.
TaildraggerThe 1926 Byrd-Bennett North Pole flight remains aviation's most debated claim — here's what happened and why historians still argue.
TaildraggerGail Halvorsen, the Berlin Airlift's Candy Bomber, turned two sticks of gum into Operation Little Vittles and gave a besieged city hope.
TaildraggerBeryl Markham made the first solo east-to-west Atlantic crossing in 1936, then was forgotten by history for nearly fifty years.
TaildraggerWiley Post lost an eye in an oil field accident, then flew solo around the world and invented the first practical pressure suit.
TaildraggerAfter Pearl Harbor closed the Pacific, Pan Am captain Robert Ford flew the Boeing 314 Pacific Clipper home the wrong way — westward around the entire world.
TaildraggerThe Maverick Act would transfer three F-14D Tomcats to Huntsville, Alabama, with at least one potentially restored to flying condition.
TowerDozens of WWII Navy trainers rest on Lake Michigan's bottom, and the remarkable recoveries are producing airworthy warbirds decades later.
TaildraggerThe Gee Bee R-1 Super Sportster was the fastest and most lethal racing airplane of the 1930s, built by five self-taught brothers.
TaildraggerTen ambitious aircraft programs that were cancelled before production, from nuclear-powered bombers to forward-swept wing fighters.
TowerHow Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, flying the Bell X-1 with two cracked ribs and a broomstick.
TaildraggerDouglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan flew from New York to Dublin in 1938, claiming he meant to go to California — and never admitted otherwise.
TaildraggerThe US Navy continues to rely on the F/A-18 Super Hornet because it delivers unmatched multirole flexibility from a carrier deck at a fraction of the F-35C's cost.
TowerThe Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst on May 6, 1937 destroyed the world's largest airship in 37 seconds and ended rigid airship travel forever.
TaildraggerHow test pilot Tex Johnston's unauthorized barrel roll of the Boeing Dash 80 prototype helped launch the 707 and the jet age.
TaildraggerIn 1987, 19-year-old Mathias Rust flew a rented Cessna 172 from Helsinki to Moscow's Red Square, exposing Soviet air defense failures and reshaping Cold War politics.
TaildraggerLincoln Beachey, the most famous pilot of aviation's early era, died in a wing failure dive over San Francisco Bay in 1915.
TaildraggerHow a P-38 Lightning buried under 268 feet of Greenland ice was recovered and restored to flying condition after 60 years.
TaildraggerHow a B-29 Superfortress abandoned on a Navy weapons range was restored to flight over nearly two decades by volunteers in Wichita.
TaildraggerIn 1959, Marine pilot William Rankin ejected at 47,000 feet and survived 40 minutes inside a thunderstorm.
TaildraggerHow Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmoviks survived sixty years underwater and the painstaking effort to restore history's most-produced combat aircraft.
TaildraggerJacqueline Cochran rose from barefoot poverty to become the fastest woman alive, breaking the sound barrier and holding more aviation records than any pilot in history.
TaildraggerThe Boeing 777 marks 30 years as the best-selling long-haul widebody in commercial aviation history, with over 2,000 deliveries.
TowerThe Night Witches flew obsolete wood-and-canvas biplanes on 23,000+ combat missions, terrorizing German forces with silent glide-bombing attacks.
TaildraggerNew Zealand's Avspecs and the UK's People's Mosquito project are rebuilding the legendary WWII wooden fighter-bomber from scratch.
TaildraggerThe true story of an F-106 Delta Dart that recovered from an unrecoverable flat spin and landed itself in a Montana wheat field in 1970.
TaildraggerCaptain Eric 'Winkle' Brown flew 487 aircraft types and made 2,407 carrier landings, records no pilot will likely ever break.
TaildraggerOn May 4, 1930, Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia in a secondhand biplane with just 75 hours in her logbook.
TaildraggerPancho Barnes broke speed records, organized Hollywood stunt pilots, and built the legendary bar where test pilots gathered after breaking the sound barrier.
TaildraggerOn May 3, 1923, Lieutenants Oakley Kelly and John Macready completed the first nonstop transcontinental flight across the United States.
TaildraggerThe story of Just Jane, the Avro Lancaster that two Lincolnshire brothers spent decades restoring to honor their brother lost over Nuremberg in 1944.
TaildraggerThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was WWII's heaviest single-engine fighter, devastating in both air combat and ground attack roles.
TaildraggerThe B-24 Lady Be Good disappeared on her first combat mission in 1943 and was found intact in the Sahara 15 years later.
TaildraggerFive Canadian airports dating back to the 1920s are still operating today, from Winnipeg's 1920 grass strip to Vancouver International.
TowerOn April 30, 1924, the Douglas World Cruiser Seattle crashed into an Alaskan mountainside, nearly ending the first-ever flight around the world.
TaildraggerHow Saburo Sakai flew nearly five hours home with a bullet in his skull after being shot over Guadalcanal in 1942.
TaildraggerA crewless B-17 Flying Fortress landed itself in a Belgian field in 1944 after all nine crew members bailed out.
TaildraggerThe Grumman F6F Hellcat was purpose-built to defeat the Zero and accounted for 75% of all Navy air-to-air kills in the Pacific.
TaildraggerHow a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 crashed in a Russian forest in 1943 was recovered six decades later and restored to flying condition.
TaildraggerCalifornia's five oldest airports still operating in 2026 span from 1923 to 1930, each with deep roots in American aviation history.
TowerThe Boeing 2707 was America's audacious supersonic airliner program, killed by Congress in 1971 after a billion dollars and zero flying prototypes.
TowerRoscoe Turner flew across America with a lion in the cockpit and won the Thompson Trophy three times, becoming aviation's greatest showman.
TaildraggerDouglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 crash, then became one of the RAF's greatest fighter aces in World War II.
TaildraggerWiley Post lost an eye in an oilfield accident, bought his first airplane with the insurance money, and changed aviation forever.
TaildraggerBoeing's Sonic Cruiser promised near-sonic speed but was shelved after 9/11 — its technology became the 787 Dreamliner.
TowerHow 16 P-38 Lightnings flew 435 miles at wave-top height to intercept and kill Admiral Yamamoto in April 1943.
TaildraggerOn April 28, 1919, Leslie Irvin made the first intentional free-fall parachute jump, proving humans stay conscious in free fall.
TaildraggerHow pilot Gail Halvorsen's unauthorized candy drops over Berlin transformed Cold War relations and became aviation's greatest humanitarian story.
TaildraggerThe sixteen-year restoration of B-29 'Doc' brought a desert hulk back to flight, making it one of only two flying Superfortresses worldwide.
TaildraggerThe 1910 Los Angeles Air Meet at Dominguez Field drew half a million spectators and ignited America's love affair with flight.
TaildraggerThe Hawker Hurricane scored 60% of Battle of Britain kills yet nearly vanished — here's how restorers are saving it.
TaildraggerOn April 27, 2005, the Airbus A380 — the largest commercial airplane ever built — made its maiden flight from Toulouse, France.
TaildraggerThe true story of an F-106 Delta Dart that recovered from a flat spin and landed itself in a Montana cornfield after its pilot ejected in 1970.
TaildraggerJackie Cochran rose from barefoot orphan to the fastest woman alive, breaking the sound barrier and holding over 200 flight records.
TaildraggerHow Tom Reilly spent two decades restoring the world's only flyable XP-82 Twin Mustang from a rusted hulk in an Ohio field.
TaildraggerThe first production MQ-25 Stingray completed its maiden flight on April 25, 2026, marking a milestone in unmanned carrier-based tanker aviation.
TowerOn April 26, 1937, the Condor Legion bombed the Basque town of Guernica in a three-hour attack that changed aerial warfare forever.
TaildraggerThe story of how the most-produced military aircraft in history was pulled from a Russian lake and restored to flight.
TaildraggerOn April 25, 1945, the Eighth Air Force flew its final bombing mission over Europe, striking the Skoda works at Pilsen, Czechoslovakia.
TaildraggerEugene Bullard, born in Georgia in 1895, became the first Black combat pilot in history, flying for France because America refused him.
TaildraggerIn 1958-59, Bob Timm and John Cook kept a stock Cessna 172 airborne for 64 days, setting a record that still stands.
TaildraggerThunder Over Michigan returns to Willow Run Airport, where Ford built a B-24 bomber every hour during WWII.
RampThe Vought F4U Corsair was rejected by the Navy for carrier use but became one of WWII's greatest fighters in Marine Corps hands.
TaildraggerThe story of Pappy Boyington, the Marine Corps' top ace of WWII who turned a squadron of misfits into legends over the Solomon Islands.
TaildraggerOperation Eagle Claw's 1980 desert failure killed eight Americans and reshaped U.S. special operations aviation forever.
TaildraggerJimmy Angel crashed his Flamingo monoplane atop Venezuela's Auyán-tepui in 1937, proving the world's tallest waterfall existed.
TaildraggerThe story of Whiskey Seven, a D-Day C-47 restored by volunteers and flown back to Normandy 70 and 75 years later.
TaildraggerThomas Fitzpatrick stole a Piper from Teterboro and landed it on a Manhattan street twice—in 1956 and 1958—to win bar bets.
TaildraggerThe Night Witches of the 588th Regiment flew plywood biplanes with dead engines through enemy fire, completing over 23,000 combat sorties on the Eastern Front.
TaildraggerThe National Warplane Museum airshow in Geneseo, New York, delivers an intimate warbird experience on grass that larger shows can't match.
RampHow four open-cockpit biplanes attempted the first flight around the world in 1924, and why Alaska nearly ended it all.
TaildraggerRichard Bong scored 40 aerial victories in the Pacific, making him the highest-scoring American fighter ace in history.
TaildraggerLouise Thaden and Blanche Noyes won the 1936 Bendix Trophy Race outright in a Beechcraft Staggerwing, beating every male competitor.
TaildraggerArt Scholl, one of the greatest aerobatic pilots in history, died filming a flat spin sequence for Top Gun in 1985.
TaildraggerHow a metric conversion error left Air Canada Flight 143 without fuel at 41,000 feet, and a glider pilot landed a 767 with no engines.
TaildraggerThe Doolittle Raid of April 1942 launched sixteen B-25 bombers from a carrier deck to strike Tokyo and alter the course of the Pacific War.
TaildraggerRoscoe Turner won three Thompson Trophies, flew with a lion cub, and became the greatest air racing pilot of the 1930s.
TaildraggerThe B-24 Lady Be Good vanished over the Sahara in 1943 and was found intact sixteen years later, four hundred miles past its base.
TaildraggerFive military aircraft have served for over 60 years each, and the engineering principles behind their longevity apply to all of aviation.
TowerThe story of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the airmail pilot and wartime reconnaissance flyer who wrote The Little Prince and vanished over the Mediterranean in 1944.
TaildraggerDouglas Corrigan flew a patched-up Curtiss Robin from New York to Ireland in 1938, claiming it was a navigational error nobody believed.
TaildraggerThe Gee Bee Super Sportster was the fastest and most dangerous racing airplane of the 1930s, built by five self-taught brothers in a converted dance hall.
TaildraggerThe Red Baron died on April 21, 1918, after breaking his own combat rules—and over a century later, his killer remains disputed.
TaildraggerHow test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled Boeing's only jet airliner prototype over Lake Washington in 1955 — and helped launch the jet age.
TaildraggerHow Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, with two broken ribs and a nine-inch piece of broom handle.
TaildraggerBob Hoover, called the greatest stick-and-rudder pilot ever by Jimmy Doolittle, redefined airmanship through six decades of flying.
TaildraggerDouglas Corrigan 'accidentally' flew from New York to Ireland in 1938 after being denied permission for years.
TaildraggerOn April 20, 1916, the Lafayette Escadrille formed as American volunteer pilots joined France's air war a full year before the U.S. entered WWI.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito was a wooden WWII aircraft that outran fighters, carried bomber payloads, and became the most versatile combat plane of the war.
TaildraggerThe decades-long quest to return the de Havilland Mosquito to flight demanded lost woodworking skills, wartime materials, and extraordinary determination.
TaildraggerHow five Texas pilots who bought a forgotten P-51 Mustang in 1957 launched the warbird preservation movement that saved thousands of WWII aircraft.
TaildraggerBeryl Markham became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic east to west in 1936, then vanished from history for fifty years.
TaildraggerThe 1949 Easter Parade delivered nearly 13,000 tons of supplies to blockaded Berlin in 24 hours, breaking Soviet resolve.
TaildraggerThe story of Glacier Girl, a P-38 Lightning recovered from 268 feet of Greenland ice and restored to flight after 60 years.
TaildraggerAfter Pearl Harbor, Pan Am's Pacific Clipper flew 31,500 miles around the world because its Pacific route home no longer existed.
TaildraggerDouglas Corrigan flew a beat-up Curtiss Robin from New York to Ireland in 1938, claiming he read his compass wrong.
TaildraggerThe Grumman F6F Hellcat achieved a 19-to-1 kill ratio and destroyed Japanese naval aviation at the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
TaildraggerThe Fokker Trimotor bridged barnstorming and commercial aviation, shaping bush flying and aircraft design after a fatal 1931 crash.
TowerThe true story of an F-106 Delta Dart that recovered from a flat spin and landed itself in a Montana cornfield in 1970.
TaildraggerOn April 17, 1964, Jerrie Mock became the first woman to fly solo around the world in a Cessna 180 named Spirit of Columbus.
TaildraggerBob Hoover escaped a Nazi POW camp, stole a Focke-Wulf 190, and became the greatest demonstration pilot in aviation history.
TaildraggerThe legendary story of the DC-2½, a Douglas DC-3 flown out of wartime China in 1941 with a mismatched DC-2 wing bolted to its fuselage.
TaildraggerThe story of Old 666, the patched-together B-17 whose June 1943 Buka mission earned two Medals of Honor in a single flight.
TaildraggerOn April 16, 1912, Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel—a landmark flight overshadowed by the Titanic disaster.
TaildraggerDoc and FIFI, the world's only two flying B-29 Superfortresses, appeared together at Sun N Fun 2026 for a historic formation flyby.
RampBob Hoover's dead-stick Shrike Commander routine defined airshow flying for 40 years and remains the gold standard for energy management.
TaildraggerThe Women Airforce Service Pilots flew 77 military aircraft types in WWII, yet waited 33 years for veterans' status.
TaildraggerThe Reno Air Races pushed warbirds to 500+ mph at 50 feet off the desert floor for six decades of speed, engineering brilliance, and profound risk.
TaildraggerThe Lockheed Constellation combined revolutionary engineering with unmatched beauty, defining the golden age of propeller-driven air travel.
TaildraggerThe Berlin Airlift sustained a city of 2.5 million by air for 15 months — and one pilot's act of kindness became its most enduring legacy.
TaildraggerIn 1986, Burt Rutan's homebuilt Voyager completed the first nonstop, unrefueled flight around the world in nine days.
TaildraggerBob Hoover's extraordinary career spanned a WWII prison escape, test flying, and airshow performances that redefined precision aerobatics.
TaildraggerAmelia Earhart was a skilled, courageous pilot whose real legacy is her flying, not her disappearance.
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