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.
TaildraggerIn January 1929, WWI ace Wop May flew 250 miles through subarctic Alberta to deliver diphtheria antitoxin and save children in isolated Fort Vermilion.
TaildraggerThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was WWII's heaviest single-engine fighter - renowned not for elegance but for absorbing punishment that should have killed it.
TaildraggerThe North American XB-70 Valkyrie flew at Mach 3 and rode its own shockwave over the Mojave, but strategic politics and a fatal midair collision ensured only one would survive to reach a museum.
TaildraggerA Douglas DC-8 freighter suffered a nose gear collapse after a runway excursion at Kinshasa's Ndjili Airport in early September 2026, potentially ending one of fewer than 20 airworthy examples of the type.
TowerOn June 4, 1942, the Douglas SBD Dauntless destroyed three Japanese fleet carriers in roughly five minutes at Midway, ending Japan's naval dominance in the Pacific.
TaildraggerRoscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times between 1934 and 1939, making him the most decorated and most theatrical pilot of aviation's golden age.
TaildraggerOn April 18, 1943, eighteen P-38 Lightnings flew 435 miles at wave-top height in radio silence to intercept and kill Japan's top naval commander using decoded communications.
TaildraggerJacqueline Cochran rose from a shoeless Depression-era childhood to hold more aviation records than any pilot in history, male or female.
TaildraggerHow a Utah C-54 pilot's unauthorized candy drops over blockaded Berlin became Operation Little Vittles and helped the West win the Cold War's first standoff.
TaildraggerOn December 14, 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew Voyager nonstop around the world in nine days without refueling, completing one of aviation's last great firsts.
TaildraggerClyde Cessna taught himself to fly through a dozen crashes in a Kansas wheat field - and those failures built the most recognized name in general aviation.
TaildraggerHow Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947 - with two broken ribs, a broomstick, and the calm of a man built for exactly that moment.
TaildraggerBob Hoover escaped a German POW camp in spring 1945 by stealing a Focke-Wulf 190 he had never flown - launching one of aviation's greatest careers.
TaildraggerThe 1934 MacRobertson Air Race from England to Australia produced two legends: a purpose-built wooden racer that won, and a commercial airliner guided down by car headlights.
TaildraggerThe Hughes H-4 Hercules flew exactly once on November 2, 1947 - one minute over Long Beach Harbor that proved a wooden giant could fly.
TaildraggerThe Hawker Hurricane destroyed 55% of German aircraft in the Battle of Britain - more than the Spitfire - yet history gave the glory to its more glamorous stablemate.
TaildraggerHow a crashed Japanese Zero in an Alaskan swamp shaped the Hellcat's design - and fueled the most lethal air combat record in US Navy history.
TaildraggerOn July 23, 1983, a unit conversion error drained both engines of a Boeing 767 at 41,000 feet - and only extraordinary airmanship saved 69 lives.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito was a twin-engine unarmed wooden bomber the Air Ministry rejected - then feared losing to its own speed.
TaildraggerIn 1924, four U.S. Army biplanes and eight men became the first to fly around the world, covering 27,553 miles in 175 days across 28 countries.
TaildraggerOn May 16, 1943, nineteen Lancaster crews flew at sixty feet above dark water to destroy Germany's Ruhr Valley dams in aviation's most daring precision raid.
TaildraggerLincoln Beachey was the most celebrated aviator of the early aviation era - a San Francisco daredevil who performed for an estimated 17 million Americans before dying in front of 250,000 at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.
TaildraggerHarold Gillam flew Alaska's worst weather for 14 years without losing a passenger - until a 1943 crash in the mountains above Ketchikan ended his legendary career.
TaildraggerFrank Luke Jr. shot down 18 enemy targets in 17 days in 1918 to become America's most efficient WWI ace and the first aviator to earn the Medal of Honor.
TaildraggerFlak Bait, the last surviving Martin B-26 Marauder, flew 202 missions over Europe and is now being preserved at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center.
TaildraggerIn January 1932, bush pilot Wop May flew a Bellanca monoplane over the Northwest Territories in the first aerial manhunt in North American history.
TaildraggerWiley Post's 1933 solo world flight broke a record and produced the first airborne evidence of the jet stream, shaping aviation to this day.
TaildraggerThe Vought F4U Corsair was rejected by the U.S. Navy for carrier operations in 1942, yet became WWII's most celebrated fighter - with the British solving its notorious approach problem.
TaildraggerThe USS Abraham Lincoln departed Thailand after a five-day port call, returning to Indo-Pacific operations - a news peg that opens a window into the world's most demanding aviation environment.
TowerThe Supermarine Spitfire emerged from racing floatplanes and a dying engineer's final obsession - its elliptical wing and Merlin engine shaping the outcome of the Battle of Britain.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle was the first B-17 crew to complete 25 combat missions over Nazi Europe, a milestone that reshaped morale across the entire Eighth Air Force in 1943.
TaildraggerOn November 20, 1953, Scott Crossfield became the first person to fly at Mach 2, reaching 1,291 mph in the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket over the Mojave Desert.
TowerThe Convair B-36 Peacemaker was the largest combat aircraft ever mass-produced, holding nuclear deterrence watch from 1948 to 1959 with a 230-foot wingspan.
TaildraggerOn August 6, 1955, Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled a 100,000-pound prototype jet over Lake Washington - and in doing so, sold the airplane that launched the jet age.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear invented wing walking in 1919 out of necessity - not showmanship - and became barnstorming's defining figure before dying at 29 on a Hollywood film set.
TaildraggerOn September 1, 1983, KAL Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet fighter after a single navigation mode error sent 269 people 300 miles off course - and directly triggered civilian GPS.
TaildraggerOn September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle flew the first fully blind flight at Mitchel Field, demonstrating the instruments that became the foundation of modern IFR.
TaildraggerGlacier Girl is a P-38F Lightning recovered from 268 feet beneath the Greenland ice cap and returned to flight in 2002, sixty years after an emergency landing during Operation Bolero.
TaildraggerIn June 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith flew a heavily overloaded Fokker trimotor from Oakland to Brisbane, becoming the first crew to cross the Pacific Ocean by air.
TaildraggerBessie Coleman became the world's first licensed Black pilot in 1921 - but only after every American flight school turned her away.
TaildraggerNASA's SOFIA program flew a modified Boeing 747-SP as a functioning infrared telescope from 2010 to 2022, culminating in the discovery of water on the Moon's sunlit surface.
VectorThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the heaviest American single-engine fighter of WWII and the most-produced American fighter aircraft in history, with 15,686 built.
TaildraggerThe Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment - all-female crews in open-cockpit biplanes - flew over 23,000 combat sorties against Nazi Germany, earning the name 'Night Witches.'
TaildraggerHow barnstorming bush pilot Jimmy Angel discovered the world's tallest waterfall and crash-landed atop an ancient Venezuelan mesa in 1937, leaving his plane behind for 33 years.
TaildraggerOn November 2, 1947, Howard Hughes flew the world's largest airplane - the H-4 Hercules - one mile across Long Beach Harbor, vindicating years of ridicule and an $18 million gamble.
TaildraggerFlak-Bait flew 207 combat missions in WWII - a record no American aircraft has matched - and its ongoing restoration at Udvar-Hazy preserves every patch as evidence.
TaildraggerOn December 14, 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager completed the first nonstop, unrefueled circumnavigation of the Earth, landing after 216 hours aloft in an aircraft built by hand in a desert hangar.
TaildraggerThe Grumman F6F Hellcat achieved a 19-to-1 kill ratio in WWII and enabled Commander David McCampbell's record nine-kill mission on October 24, 1944.
TaildraggerOn April 6, 1924, four Douglas World Cruisers left Seattle on the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe - a 175-day, 27,553-mile mission that reshaped American aviation.
TaildraggerThe Dornier Do 335 Pfeil was the fastest piston-engine fighter ever evaluated by Allied test pilots - and only one of the 37 built still survives.
TaildraggerHow Lt. Gail Halvorsen turned two sticks of chewing gum into Operation Little Vittles, dropping over 23 tons of candy on blockaded West Berlin.
TaildraggerHow Douglas Corrigan spent 11 years chasing government approval to fly the Atlantic, then crossed it anyway on July 17, 1938 - and spent the rest of his life denying it.
TaildraggerDon Sheldon pioneered glacier landings on Denali in the 1950s, transforming mountaineering logistics and becoming the legendary bush pilot of Talkeetna, Alaska.
TaildraggerThe Bristol Type 170 Freighter - pioneer of cross-Channel car ferry aviation - has reached a landmark restoration milestone at Aerospace Bristol's historic Filton site.
TowerOn June 4, 1942, Lt. Cdr. Wade McClusky's decision to keep searching over empty Pacific waters led to a five-minute attack that sank three Japanese carriers and turned the tide of the war.
TaildraggerEight military pilots flew the X-15 above 50 miles in the 1960s, earning astronaut wings and defining the altitude threshold still encoded in U.S. commercial space law today.
VectorThe U.S. Navy has formally asked defense contractors to propose autonomous carrier-based strike aircraft capable of carrying up to 10,000 pounds of ordnance - a landmark step toward unmanned combat aviation.
TowerHow a German pilot's navigational error in June 1942 handed Britain its most valuable aviation intelligence of the entire war.
TaildraggerThe Douglas DC-3 was the first airliner to make commercial aviation profitable on passenger revenue alone - and it's still flying nearly 90 years later.
TaildraggerThe 1954 de Havilland Comet disasters revealed how square window corners caused fatal metal fatigue, permanently transforming pressurized aircraft design worldwide.
TaildraggerThe B-29 Doc sat abandoned in a California desert for four decades before a 16-year volunteer effort brought it back to flight over Wichita in 2016.
TaildraggerThe Aichi M6A Seiran was a WWII Japanese floatplane designed to fold inside a submarine and strike American targets - the sole survivor hangs at the Udvar-Hazy Center.
TaildraggerOn August 7, 1955, Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled the prototype 707 twice over Lake Washington, helping launch the commercial jet age.
TaildraggerRichard Bong flew 40 aerial victories over the Pacific in a P-38 Lightning, becoming America's greatest fighter ace - and died in a California test flight on August 6, 1945.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear invented wing-walking out of in-flight necessity in 1917, became America's first aviation celebrity, and died at 28 during a Hollywood night-dive stunt in 1920.
TaildraggerIn 1911, Cal Rodgers became the first person to cross America by air - 84 days, ~4,300 miles, and no instruments - after forfeiting the prize he set out to win.
TaildraggerOn September 4, 1936, Beryl Markham became the first person to fly solo non-stop from England to North America - east to west, against the prevailing winds, alone.
TaildraggerThe USS Abraham Lincoln completed 286 consecutive days at sea, including seven months of combat operations, before arriving in Thailand on September 2, 2026 - a deployment that tests both aircraft and aviators to their limits.
TowerR.J. Mitchell designed the Spitfire's revolutionary elliptical wing before dying of cancer in 1937, never seeing his aircraft save Britain in 1940.
TaildraggerOn November 22, 1935, Pan American's China Clipper completed the first transpacific airmail flight under Captain Edwin Musick, opening scheduled commercial service across the Pacific.
TaildraggerThe Hughes H-4 Hercules flew just once in 1947, but its single minute over Long Beach Harbor silenced Senate critics and left an enduring mark on aviation engineering.
TaildraggerHow a 1919 government surplus sale of WWI training aircraft for as little as $200 each launched barnstorming and gave rural America its first taste of flight.
TaildraggerOn the night of May 16, 1943, RAF 617 Squadron flew at 60 feet above German reservoirs to deliver a spinning bomb that breached two dams and reshaped strategic bombing.
TaildraggerEight years before Lindbergh, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown crossed the Atlantic non-stop in an open-cockpit biplane - and most people have never heard their names.
TaildraggerOn October 24, 1944, Commander David McCampbell and one wingman intercepted 60 Japanese aircraft over the Philippine Sea, producing the most lethal single aerial mission in U.S. naval history.
TaildraggerBessie Coleman earned her pilot's license in 1921 after every American flight school refused her - so she crossed an ocean and trained in France instead.
TaildraggerThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the heaviest single-engine fighter of WWII - and its near-indestructibility made it one of the most effective combat aircraft ever built.
TaildraggerThe U.S. Navy has issued a Request for Information for a carrier-based autonomous combat aircraft capable of catapult launches, arrested landings, and carrying up to 10,000 lbs of weapons.
TowerThe barrel-shaped Gee Bee Model R-One hit 252 mph to win the 1932 Thompson Trophy - and killed nearly every pilot who flew it after Doolittle walked away.
TaildraggerOn June 4, 1942, Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers the Navy had already written off sank three Japanese fleet carriers in six minutes and turned the Pacific War.
TaildraggerPhoebe Omlie became the first woman to hold a U.S. federal transport pilot's license in 1929, starting as a barnstorming wing-walker before shaping national aviation policy.
TaildraggerOn September 2, 1944, a 20-year-old Navy pilot named George H.W. Bush completed his bomb run over Chichi Jima with his engine on fire, bailed out, and floated four hours before a submarine rescued him.
TaildraggerOn September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle flew a complete circuit under a canvas hood at Mitchel Field - the first fully blind flight, and the foundation of every IFR approach flown since.
TaildraggerOn April 16, 1912, Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly the English Channel - a feat buried by the Titanic disaster that same week.
TaildraggerHarold Gillam - the Alaska bush pilot no crash could kill - died in January 1943 trying to walk to help after putting his passengers down on a frozen mountain.
TaildraggerFlak Bait, a Martin B-26 Marauder, flew 202 combat missions over occupied Europe - more than any other American aircraft in the entire European Theater.
TaildraggerDouglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 crash, proved he could still fly to operational standards, was discharged on a technicality, then returned in WWII to lead RAF fighter squadrons.
TaildraggerDoc the B-29 Superfortress returned to flight on July 17, 2016, after decades in the California desert - one of the most significant warbird restorations in American aviation history.
TaildraggerIn December 1943, a Luftwaffe pilot chose mercy over victory over the North Sea - and the two men who lived it didn't find each other again for 46 years.
TaildraggerThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the most-produced American fighter of WWII - a massive, armor-laden aircraft engineered to bring pilots home from the worst the Luftwaffe could deliver.
TaildraggerThe P-51 Mustang became WWII's finest piston-engine fighter through bold engineering decisions, a revolutionary wing, and one test pilot's honest memo.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle - the first B-17 crew to complete 25 combat missions over occupied Europe - is now fully restored and on permanent display in Dayton, Ohio.
TaildraggerThe 1934 MacRobertson Air Race flew 11,300 miles from England to Australia in under three days, reshaping the future of long-haul commercial aviation.
TaildraggerHow 300,000 volunteer hours over 13 years brought B-29 Doc back to the sky over Wichita in 2016 - one of only two flying Superfortresses left on Earth.
TaildraggerOn August 7, 1955, test pilot Tex Johnston barrel rolled Boeing's 707 prototype over Lake Washington - and sold the jet age.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear invented wing-walking in 1919, became America's most famous aviator, and died on a Hollywood film set blinded by klieg lights during a night stunt.
TaildraggerOn May 16, 1943, nineteen RAF Lancasters flew at 60 feet in darkness to breach Nazi Germany's Ruhr Valley dams in one of history's most precisely executed aerial missions.
TaildraggerThe 1983 Soviet shoot-down of KAL Flight 007 killed 269 people and directly led to President Reagan opening GPS to civilian aircraft worldwide.
TaildraggerDon Sheldon pioneered the glacier landing techniques still used in Alaska today, flying ski planes into the Alaska Range professionally for thirty years from Talkeetna.
TaildraggerIn 1911, Cal Rodgers crossed the United States in 84 days on just 60 hours of flight experience, becoming the first pilot to fly coast to coast.
TaildraggerBessie Coleman became the world's first Black female licensed pilot in 1921 after sailing to France when every American flight school refused her application.
TaildraggerWiley Post's 1933 solo flight around the world in under eight days remains one of aviation's most overlooked achievements - completed by a one-eyed Oklahoma roughneck who pioneered the autopilot, the pressure suit, and the jet stream.
TaildraggerThe Dornier Do 335 Pfeil was the fastest piston-engine fighter of World War Two, and the only surviving example is on display at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.
TaildraggerThe F4U Corsair compiled an 11-to-1 kill ratio over Japanese fighters despite being rejected for carrier ops - the full story of the bent-wing bird.
TaildraggerRichard Bong shot down 40 Japanese aircraft over the Pacific - a record no American fighter pilot has matched in over 80 years - and died the same morning the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima.
TaildraggerThe Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew obsolete biplanes in silence over German lines - and became one of WWII's most effective and feared combat units.
TaildraggerOn September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle completed the first fully blind flight at Mitchel Field, NY, proving instrument flying could make commercial aviation viable in all weather.
TaildraggerFlak Bait, the Martin B-26 Marauder that flew 202 WWII combat missions, remains the most battle-proven American aircraft of the war - and its Smithsonian restoration tells that story in aluminum.
TaildraggerHow one man's obsession with flying WWI-era aircraft kept the first generation of flight alive at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in New York.
TaildraggerHow Bob Reeve built Alaska's air supply network from a tidal mud flat and glacier landings, guided by one enduring rule: go home slow.
TaildraggerIn July 1938, Douglas Corrigan flew from Brooklyn to Dublin in a plane denied transatlantic clearance and spent 57 years insisting it was an accident.
TaildraggerThe 332nd Fighter Group flew over 15,000 combat sorties in WWII, built an exceptional bomber escort record, and dismantled the official Army doctrine that said Black men were unfit to fly.
TaildraggerThe Gee Bee R-1 won the 1932 Thompson Trophy at 252.6 mph - and its story reveals how civilian air racing built the foundation for WWII combat aviation.
TaildraggerHow R.J. Mitchell's decade of Schneider Trophy racing produced the design language that made the Spitfire Britain's defining fighter of World War II.
TaildraggerOn June 14, 1919, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight - eight years before Lindbergh, in a converted bomber with failed instruments.
TaildraggerHurricane R4118 flew 49 combat sorties in 1940, vanished to India for decades, and was restored to flight in 2004 as one of warbird aviation's most documented recoveries.
TaildraggerEddie Rickenbacker survived WWI aerial combat, a catastrophic airline crash, and 24 days adrift in the Pacific - an unmatched record of resilience in aviation history.
TaildraggerCarl Ben Eielson pioneered Alaska's airmail routes and crossed the Arctic Ocean before dying in a 1929 mercy mission over Siberia at age 32.
TaildraggerIn January 1929, Wop May and Vic Horner flew diphtheria antitoxin 700 miles to Fort Vermilion, Alberta in brutal cold, completing in two days what would have taken dogsled teams three weeks.
TaildraggerThe shirttail cut is aviation's oldest training ritual, tracing directly to tandem-cockpit instruction when an instructor's tug on the fabric was the primary means of physical communication.
RampPete Knight flew the X-15 to Mach 6.7 on October 3, 1967 - a speed no winged aircraft has matched in nearly 59 years, and a record built on engineering that still shapes aerospace today.
VectorHow 100 American pilots resigned their commissions and defeated the Japanese Air Force over Burma and China before the US officially entered WWII.
TaildraggerIn 1924, two U.S. Army Air Service biplanes completed the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe - 175 days, 363 hours, and 26,345 miles in open cockpits.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito - built of wood, crewed by two, carrying no guns - recorded the lowest loss rate of any aircraft in RAF Bomber Command during World War II.
TaildraggerRoscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times in the 1930s - a record no pilot has ever matched - and flew coast to coast with a lion named Gilmore.
TaildraggerBessie Coleman became the world's first Black woman to earn an international pilot's license in 1921 after crossing the Atlantic to train in France when every American school refused her.
TaildraggerHow 617 Squadron's nineteen Lancasters breached the Ruhr dams on May 16-17, 1943, using Barnes Wallis's revolutionary bouncing bomb.
TaildraggerOn the night of May 16, 1943, nineteen Lancasters flew at sixty feet to deliver Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb and breach two of Nazi Germany's most critical dams.
TaildraggerJacqueline Cochran rose from a dirt-floor childhood in the Florida panhandle to become the first woman to break the sound barrier and the most decorated pilot in American history.
TaildraggerIvan Gates turned barnstorming into a scalable business empire that put over a quarter million Americans in airplanes - more than any government program of the era.
TaildraggerHow a fire-scorched B-29 abandoned at China Lake became one of two airworthy Superfortresses after a 16-year, 300,000-hour volunteer restoration in Wichita.
TaildraggerWiley Post, a one-eyed Oklahoma oilfield worker, flew solo around the world in 1933 and pioneered pressure suit technology that became the foundation for modern spacesuits.
TaildraggerHow Howard Hughes built a 320-foot wooden flying boat, silenced Congress with a single 26-second flight, and created the most ambitious aircraft ever constructed.
TaildraggerHow a five-paragraph memo by an RAF test pilot led to the engine swap that transformed the P-51 Mustang into the war-winning fighter of World War II.
TaildraggerOn August 27, 1939, test pilot Erich Warsitz flew the Heinkel He 178 for six minutes - the first turbojet-powered flight in history - five days before World War II began.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear invented wing-walking in 1917 as a mechanical fix, not a stunt, and died on camera at 28 performing a night dive for a Hollywood film in 1920.
TaildraggerOn April 18, 1943, sixteen P-38 Lightnings flew a precisely calculated intercept mission over Bougainville and shot down Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of Pearl Harbor.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle completed 25 combat missions in 1943, spent decades deteriorating outdoors in Memphis, and was saved by a landmark restoration unveiled May 17, 2018.
TaildraggerHarriet Quimby became the first woman to fly the English Channel on April 16, 1912 - a milestone nearly erased by the Titanic sinking the night before.
TaildraggerOn October 21, 1928, seventeen-year-old Elinor Smith flew a Waco biplane under all four East River bridges, launching one of American aviation's most celebrated careers.
TaildraggerDon Sheldon was the Talkeetna bush pilot who flew the Alaska Range for thirty years, pioneering glacier landing techniques that still define mountain flying today.
TaildraggerIn 1911, Cal Rodgers flew coast-to-coast in 49 days aboard a grape-soda-sponsored Wright biplane - crashing 15+ times, flying with a broken arm, and changing aviation forever.
TaildraggerRejected by the Navy and handed to the Marines, the Vought F4U Corsair became the Pacific War's most feared fighter with an 11-to-1 kill ratio.
TaildraggerAfter WWI, the U.S. Army auctioned thousands of surplus Curtiss JN-4 Jennies for as little as $200, launching the barnstorming era that brought flight to rural America.
TaildraggerThe Tuskegee Airmen's 332nd Fighter Group flew over 200 WWII bomber escort missions with an exceptionally low loss rate - a record earned through discipline, not circumstance.
TaildraggerNASA's Shuttle Training Aircraft - a modified Gulfstream II - prepared shuttle commanders for the orbiter's 22-degree, no-go-around final approach using real aerodynamics in real airspace.
VectorThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the most produced American fighter of World War II - a massive, punishment-absorbing machine that brought pilots home when nothing else could.
TaildraggerHow a single German navigation error on August 24, 1940 triggered the chain of decisions that redirected the Luftwaffe away from the RAF's airfields - and saved Britain.
TaildraggerOn the night of May 16–17, 1943, 617 Squadron's Lancaster bombers flew at 60 feet to breach the Ruhr Valley's dams using Barnes Wallis's revolutionary bouncing bomb.
TaildraggerOn September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle completed the first fully instrument-guided flight under a canvas hood at Mitchel Field, proving blind flight could be a system, not a stunt.
TaildraggerHow Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew 26,366 miles around the Earth without landing or refueling - nine days in a cockpit two feet wide.
TaildraggerOn October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 with two broken ribs and a broom handle - the complete story of how it happened.
TaildraggerHow Bob Reeve arrived in Depression-era Alaska with $75 and invented commercial glacier flying on the tidal flats of Valdez.
TaildraggerBeryl Markham made the first solo east-to-west Atlantic crossing in 1936, flying 21 hours against the prevailing winds in a single-engine Percival Vega Gull.
TaildraggerHow bush pilot Wop May flew a ski-equipped Bellanca Pacemaker through 55-below-zero temperatures to track the Mad Trapper of Rat River during Canada's most extraordinary wilderness manhunt in 1932.
TaildraggerThe Schneider Trophy seaplane races of the 1920s and 1930s directly produced the engineering breakthroughs that made the Supermarine Spitfire - and Britain's survival in 1940 - possible.
TaildraggerThe North American X-15 holds the all-time speed record for a winged aircraft and sent eight pilots to space - records that have stood for nearly sixty years.
VectorThe Memphis Belle flew 25 combat missions over Europe in 1943, then sat neglected outdoors for decades before a 25,000-hour volunteer restoration returned her to glory.
TaildraggerThe Douglas SBD Dauntless sank four Japanese fleet carriers at Midway on June 4, 1942, in four minutes that permanently shifted the balance of power in the Pacific War.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito - rejected twice by the Air Ministry - became WWII's fastest bomber and flew the daring Operation Jericho prison raid in February 1944.
TaildraggerThe RAF's unarmed, pink-painted Photo Reconnaissance Unit Spitfires gathered the intelligence that shaped Allied strategy across every major WWII campaign.
TowerOn January 2, 1967, Brigadier General Robin Olds led 28 F-4 Phantoms disguised as an F-105 strike package into an ambush of their own design, destroying seven MiG-21s in twelve minutes without a single American loss.
TaildraggerOn September 28, 1924, two U.S. Army Air Service biplanes completed the first aerial circumnavigation of the Earth - 27,553 miles in 175 days.
TaildraggerKatherine Stinson set cross-country distance records, performed night aerobatics with Roman candles, barnstormed Japan and China, and was still rejected by the Army in WWI.
TaildraggerThe complete story of Glacier Girl - the P-38 Lightning buried 268 feet under the Greenland ice cap in 1942 and restored to flight in 2002.
TaildraggerBessie Coleman became the world's first Black woman to earn an internationally recognized pilot's license in 1921 after every American flight school refused to train her.
TaildraggerOn August 25, 1919, a passenger boarded a converted WWI bomber at Hounslow Heath and flew to Paris, launching scheduled international commercial aviation.
TaildraggerHow Voyager and its crew flew nonstop around the world without refueling in 1986 - the design, the risks, and the record.
TaildraggerThe story of Harold Gillam, the Alaska bush pilot who mastered instrument flight and flew through weather that grounded everyone else.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The X B Seventy Valkyrie, the Mach Three Bomber That Folded Its Wingtips to Ride Its Own Shockwave, and the Lone Survivor Standing in Dayton.
TaildraggerThe story of the P-47 Thunderbolt, the eight-ton 'Jug' whose air-cooled toughness brought WWII pilots home from impossible damage.
TaildraggerThe Lockheed C-130 Hercules first flew on August 23, 1954 - and Kelly Johnson swore the 'ugly' cargo plane would ruin Lockheed. He was wrong.
TaildraggerThe Grumman F6F Hellcat downed over 5,000 enemy aircraft in the Pacific with a 19-to-1 kill ratio, built to beat the Zero.
TaildraggerHow Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet in 1983 and was glided to a safe landing on a Manitoba drag strip.
TaildraggerThe story of Gail Halvorsen, the Candy Bomber who dropped chocolate on parachutes to blockaded Berlin's children during the 1948 airlift.
TaildraggerHow the B-26 'Flak-Bait' flew a record 207 missions and why the Smithsonian is preserving her scars instead of restoring her.
TaildraggerHow RAF ace Douglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 crash, then flew Spitfires and Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain.
TaildraggerIn 1911, Cal Rodgers flew the Vin Fiz coast to coast in 49 days - the first flight across America - despite dozens of crashes.
TaildraggerHow one-eyed Oklahoma roughneck Wiley Post flew solo around the world and discovered the jet stream in a wooden airplane.
TaildraggerThe story of the F4U Corsair, the 'Whistling Death' fighter too wild for carriers that the Marines turned into a legend.
TaildraggerHow two men kept a Cessna 172 airborne for nearly 65 days over Las Vegas in 1958–59, setting a flight endurance record that still stands.
TaildraggerThe Boeing 307 Stratoliner was the first pressurized airliner - and its lone survivor sank in Elliott Bay in 2002 before being rebuilt again.
TaildraggerHow 'That's All, Brother,' the C-47 that led the D-Day airborne assault, was rescued from a scrap line and flown home by volunteers.
TaildraggerHow Pancho Barnes became the fastest woman in the world and built the desert club at the heart of the supersonic age.
TaildraggerHow the RAF's 1943 Dambusters raid used Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb to breach the Ruhr dams at just sixty feet.
TaildraggerHow Noel Wien became the first pilot to cross the Arctic Circle in Alaska - and why his caution made him a legend.
TaildraggerHow Clyde Pangborn walked the wing of Miss Veedol over the Pacific in 1931 to complete the first nonstop transpacific flight.
TaildraggerThe Spruce Goose flew just one mile for 26 seconds in 1947, yet still holds the record for the longest wingspan of any aircraft ever flown.
TaildraggerThe story of the Piper J-3 Cub, the $1,000 yellow airplane that taught America to fly and trained most WWII pilots.
TaildraggerThe Night Witches flew 23,000+ night bombing sorties in plywood biplanes, gliding silently onto German lines on the WWII Eastern Front.
TaildraggerHow Roscoe Turner, the showman with a lion co-pilot, became the only pilot to win the Thompson Trophy three times.
TaildraggerHow Jimmy Doolittle's 15-minute blind flight in 1929 invented instrument flying and changed aviation forever.
TaildraggerHow Glacier Girl, a P-38 Lightning, was cut from under 268 feet of Greenland ice and flew again 50 years later.
TaildraggerHow a WWII B-29 named Doc went from a Mojave bombing target to one of only two airworthy Superfortresses, restored by volunteers in Wichita.
TaildraggerHow broke bush pilot Bob Reeve used tidal mudflats and homemade steel skis to land airplanes on Alaskan glaciers and build an airline.
TaildraggerHow John Alcock and Arthur Brown flew a converted Vickers Vimy bomber across the Atlantic nonstop in 1919, eight years before Lindbergh.
TaildraggerHow Voyager made the first nonstop, unrefueled flight around the world in 1986, landing with under 50 pounds of fuel to spare.
TaildraggerThe XB-70 Valkyrie was a Mach 3 bomber made obsolete by missiles; the last one survives at the Air Force museum in Dayton.
TaildraggerThe story of the Lockheed Constellation, the triple-tailed airliner Howard Hughes ordered in secret to fly higher and faster than anything in the sky.
TaildraggerThe Hawker Hurricane, not the Spitfire, downed the majority of Luftwaffe aircraft in the Battle of Britain - here's the full story.
TaildraggerHow the wooden de Havilland Mosquito, built by furniture makers, outran WWII fighters and flew a dozen combat roles.
TaildraggerHow test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled the Boeing Dash 80 over Lake Washington in 1955 and sold the world on jets.
TaildraggerHow Robin Olds and the Wolfpack disguised F-4 Phantoms as bombers and destroyed seven MiG-21s in twelve minutes over Hanoi.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear invented professional wing-walking and the deadly plane-to-plane 'Dance of Death' - until a 1920 film stunt killed him at 28.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Operation Tidal Wave, the Low-Level B Twenty-Four Raid on the Ploesti Oil Refineries, August First, Nineteen Forty-Three.
TaildraggerHow Flak-Bait, a B-26 Marauder, flew 207 combat missions in WWII and is now being conserved piece by piece at the Smithsonian.
TaildraggerHow Cal Rodgers and the Vin Fiz made the first flight across America in 1911, surviving 16 crashes over 49 days.
TaildraggerHow the Travel Air Mystery Ship, flown by Doug Davis, beat the Army and Navy at the 1929 Cleveland air races.
TaildraggerThe Night Witches flew plywood Po-2 biplanes on up to 18 silent night bombing runs, becoming WWII's most feared women aviators.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The Memphis Belle, the B Seventeen That Flew Twenty-Five and Went Home to Prove It Could Be Done.
TaildraggerIn 1924 the US Army Air Service flew Douglas World Cruisers around the globe in 175 days - the first flight around the world.
TaildraggerHow the Douglas DC-3 made airlines profitable for the first time, then won a war as the C-47 Gooney Bird - and why it still flies today.
TaildraggerHow Bessie Coleman, a Texas sharecropper's daughter, sailed to France in 1920 to earn the pilot's license America denied her.
TaildraggerHow German engineer Otto Lilienthal proved human flight was possible - and gave his data away so the Wright brothers could finish the job.
TaildraggerNational Aviation Day falls on August 19 each year, marking Orville Wright's birthday and celebrating a century-plus of powered flight.
TowerHow a P-38 Lightning buried under 268 feet of Greenland ice for 50 years was recovered and restored to flight as Glacier Girl.
TaildraggerHow FIFI, a B-29 rescued from a desert missile range in 1971, became the world's last flying Superfortress - and the rebuild that saved her again.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Charles Kingsford Smith, the Southern Cross, and the First Flight Across the Pacific in Nineteen Twenty-Eight.
TaildraggerHow Bob Reeve, the Glacier Pilot of Valdez, invented Alaska glacier flying from $2 and a stainless-steel bar top.
TaildraggerHow Beryl Markham became the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic east to west in 1936, into the wind.
TaildraggerHow volunteers and public donations returned Avro Vulcan XH558, the last flying Vulcan, to the sky from 2007 to 2015.
TaildraggerHow the Thirteen Black Cats organized at Burdett Field in 1925 and used a fixed price list to turn barnstorming into a real profession.
TaildraggerThe story of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt - the eight-ton 'Jug' that outdove enemy fighters and brought its pilots home riddled with holes.
TaildraggerOn August 18, 1940 - the Battle of Britain's 'Hardest Day' - the RAF and Luftwaffe suffered their heaviest single-day losses over Kent.
TaildraggerHow Air Canada Flight 143 ran both engines dry at 41,000 feet in 1983 and glided to a safe landing on a drag strip.
TaildraggerHow Jimmy Doolittle tamed the deadly Gee Bee Model R to win the 1932 Thompson Trophy at 252 mph - then walked away for good.
TaildraggerThe Swamp Ghost is the world's only intact B-17E, recovered from a New Guinea swamp after 64 years and now displayed at Pearl Harbor.
TaildraggerHow a dying R.J. Mitchell designed the Supermarine Spitfire's elliptical wing and died in 1937, before it saved Britain.
TaildraggerHow Pancho Barnes, the fastest woman alive in 1930, built the desert club where test pilots gathered before breaking the sound barrier.
TaildraggerOperation Tidal Wave, the August 1, 1943 low-level B-24 raid on Ploesti, became the costliest U.S. air mission of WWII.
TaildraggerHow motorcycle racer Glenn Curtiss became the 'Fastest Man on Earth,' invented the flying boat, and gave the U.S. Navy its first aircraft.
TaildraggerHow race driver Eddie Rickenbacker became WWI's top American ace, then survived 24 days on a Pacific raft in 1942.
TaildraggerIn 1986, Voyager flew nonstop around the world unrefueled - here's the full story of that record-setting nine-day flight.
TaildraggerHow the F4U Corsair's inverted gull wing, 2,000-hp engine, and whistling scream made it one of WWII's greatest fighters.
TaildraggerThe Night Witches flew wood-and-canvas biplanes over the German lines at night with their engines cut - here's their story.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle flew 25 missions, rotted for decades in the open, then took 13 years to restore for Dayton.
TaildraggerHow Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled the $16 million Dash 80 prototype over Seattle in 1955 and sold the world on the jet age.
TaildraggerHow showman-pilot Roscoe Turner won three Thompson Trophies flying the Wedell-Williams racer - with a lion cub named Gilmore riding along.
TaildraggerHow 16 P-38 Lightnings flew a 1,000-mile dead-reckoning ambush to kill Admiral Yamamoto, the mastermind of Pearl Harbor.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Just Jane, the Avro Lancaster November X Six One One, and the Two Lincolnshire Farmers Who Bought a Bomber to Bring Their Brother Home.
TaildraggerHow Ivan Gates and pilot Clyde Pangborn built the Gates Flying Circus and flew a million Americans on their first flights.
TaildraggerHow Eric 'Winkle' Brown flew 487 aircraft types and made the first jet carrier landing in history.
TaildraggerOn August 17, 1978, Double Eagle II became the first balloon to cross the Atlantic, ending a century of failed attempts and 13 deaths.
TaildraggerIn 1911 Cal Rodgers flew the Vin Fiz coast to coast in 84 days, becoming the first person to cross America by air despite missing the prize.
TaildraggerHow Bob Reeve turned Alaska's Valdez mudflats into a runway with metal-shod skis and became a legendary glacier pilot.
TaildraggerHow one-eyed Oklahoma roughneck Wiley Post flew solo around the world in under 8 days and pioneered the autopilot, pressure suit, and jet stream.
TaildraggerThe Shuttleworth Collection's DH.88 Comet 'Grosvenor House,' the world's only airworthy original, nosed over landing at Old Warden - pilot unhurt.
TowerHow Jimmy Doolittle tamed the Gee Bee Model R - aviation's most feared racer - to win the 1932 Thompson Trophy and a world speed record.
TaildraggerHow the Douglas DC-3 became the first airplane to make airlines profitable - and why it's still flying freight nearly 90 years later.
TaildraggerHow Gail Halvorsen's two sticks of gum sparked the Berlin Candy Bomber legend during the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear, the King of the Wing Walkers, invented wing walking and the mid-air plane change before dying on film in 1920.
TaildraggerHow the Dam Busters of 617 Squadron used a bouncing bomb to breach Germany's Ruhr dams at 60 feet in the dark on 16 May 1943.
TaildraggerOn August 16, 1960, Joe Kittinger stepped from a balloon 102,800 feet up and set records that stood for 52 years.
TaildraggerHow the B-26 Marauder Flak-Bait flew ~207 combat missions without losing a crewman - and why the Smithsonian is conserving her rivet by rivet.
TaildraggerHow a B-29 named Doc survived 20 years as a desert bombing target and flew again after 300,000 volunteer hours.
TaildraggerThe Cavanaugh Flight Museum at Addison, Texas keeps its warbirds airworthy - a living museum where fighters still fly.
RampHow Butch O'Hare downed five bombers in six minutes to save the USS Lexington - and why Chicago's airport bears his name.
TaildraggerHow Bessie Coleman sailed to France in 1920 to become the first Black woman and first Native American woman to earn a pilot's license.
TaildraggerHow R J Mitchell's Supermarine S.6B won the Schneider Trophy and broke 400 mph in 1931, laying the groundwork for the Spitfire.
TaildraggerHow the Piper J-3 Cub - 65 horsepower, Lock Haven Yellow, and endlessly forgiving - taught more Americans to fly than any aircraft in history.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Tex Johnston, the Dash Eighty, and the Barrel Roll Over Lake Washington That Sold the World on the Jet Airliner.
TaildraggerOn its final flight in 1990, SR-71 Blackbird tail 972 set four world speed records flying LA to DC in 64 minutes, then retired to the Smithsonian.
TaildraggerHow Captain Bob Pardo used his F-4 Phantom's windscreen to physically push a crippled fighter out of North Vietnam in 1967.
TaildraggerHow Noel Wien became Alaska's greatest bush pilot and the first to fly commercially between North America and Asia - by being careful.
TaildraggerHow KA114 became the first flying de Havilland Mosquito in 16 years, thanks to one man in New Zealand who rebuilt the molds by hand.
TaildraggerHow one-eyed pilot Wiley Post flew solo around the world, discovered the jet stream, and invented the pressure suit.
TaildraggerOn November 2, 1947, Howard Hughes flew the wooden Spruce Goose one mile over Long Beach Harbor, proving critics wrong.
TaildraggerIn 1929 the Army's Question Mark stayed aloft 150 hours over Los Angeles, proving aerial refueling and changing airpower forever.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The Lockheed P-38 Lightning, the Fork-Tailed Devil With Two Booms and Two Engines That Outran Everything and Brought Its Pilots Home.
TaildraggerIn 1924, four US Army Douglas World Cruisers set out to circle the globe - and the Chicago and New Orleans became the first aircraft ever to fly around the world.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Swamp Ghost, the B Seventeen E Flying Fortress That Sat Sixty-Four Years in a New Guinea Swamp Before Anybody Could Get Her Out.
TaildraggerOperation Tidal Wave was the daring August 1, 1943 low-level B-24 raid on Ploesti's oil refineries - costly, heroic, and strategically incomplete.
TaildraggerHow Alaska legend Harold Gillam pioneered instrument flying, never lost a passenger for 15 years, and died in a 1943 crash.
TaildraggerHow Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis on October 14, 1947 - and why she now hangs in the Smithsonian.
TaildraggerHow the B-17 Memphis Belle survived 25 combat missions in 1943, nearly rotted on a scrap heap, and was saved by a 13-year restoration.
TaildraggerThe story of the Gee Bee Model R and how Jimmy Doolittle rode the most dangerous racer in America to a 1932 Thompson Trophy win.
TaildraggerHow the Flying Tigers and their shark-toothed P-40 Warhawks defended Burma against a superior enemy in 1941-42.
TaildraggerThe Douglas DC-3 first flew in 1935, made passenger air travel profitable, won a war, and 90 years later still refuses to retire.
TaildraggerThe Cornfield Bomber: how an F-106 recovered from a flat spin, landed itself in a Montana field, and flew again for years.
TaildraggerRoscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times, flew with a lion named Gilmore, and helped drive early aviation technology.
TaildraggerHow the RAF's 1943 Dambusters raid used Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb to breach the Ruhr dams - and what it cost.
TaildraggerHow Ivan Gates and Clyde Pangborn built the Gates Flying Circus, sold dollar airplane rides, and flew the first nonstop crossing of the Pacific.
TaildraggerFlak-Bait, the B-26 Marauder that flew a record 207 combat missions, is being conserved at the Smithsonian exactly as she came home.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Bob Reeve, the Valdez Mudflats, and the Stainless-Steel Skis That Turned a Tidal Bog Into the Only Runway a Glacier Pilot Needed.
TaildraggerHow Bessie Coleman, a Chicago manicurist, sailed to France in 1920 to become the first Black woman in the world to earn a pilot's license.
TaildraggerAdlertag (Eagle Day), August 13, 1940, was the Luftwaffe's failed knockout blow against the RAF at the start of the Battle of Britain.
TaildraggerThe F4U Corsair was rejected by the Navy as too dangerous for carriers, then became a legendary Marine fighter with an 11-to-1 kill ratio.
TaildraggerHow the 1931 Schneider Trophy and the Supermarine S.6B forged the wing and engine that became the Spitfire and Merlin.
TaildraggerThe Night Witches flew wood-and-canvas biplanes on silent night raids against German lines - here's their story.
TaildraggerHow Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet in 1983 and glided to a dead-stick landing at Gimli.
TaildraggerThe Enola Gay's 20-year, 300,000-hour Smithsonian restoration saved the B-29 amid a bitter national fight over how to display her.
TaildraggerThe story of Ormer Locklear, aviation's first great wing walker, and the searchlight signal that failed on the night he died.
TaildraggerHow P-38 Lightning pilots flew a 1,000-mile ocean route to ambush Admiral Yamamoto on April 18, 1943 in Operation Vengeance.
TaildraggerFedEx unveils a retro 777 Freighter livery honoring its 1973 Falcon 20 roots as Memphis renames its airport for founder Fred Smith.
TowerOn August 12, 1977, Space Shuttle Enterprise made its first free flight, proving a pilot could glide an orbiter to a landing.
TaildraggerHow Alaskan bush pilot Don Sheldon landed a Piper Super Cub high on Denali to rescue injured climbers in May 1960.
TaildraggerHow a B-29 named Doc went from a Mojave bombing target to one of only two airworthy Superfortresses, restored by the town that built her.
TaildraggerIn 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith flew the Southern Cross across the Pacific for the first time - a 7,000-mile journey no one had dared before.
TaildraggerHow airmail pilot Elrey 'Jepp' Jeppesen turned a ten-cent notebook into the Jeppesen charts every instrument pilot still flies today.
TaildraggerA Russian Mi-24 Hind flew as the enemy in a Marine Corps exercise at Twenty Nine Palms - here's why the Marines wanted it there.
TowerOn December 20, 1943, German ace Franz Stigler refused to shoot down a crippled B-17 and escorted it to safety instead.
TaildraggerHow Voyager flew around the world nonstop and unrefueled in 1986, the last great milestone of atmospheric flight.
TaildraggerThe story of Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose, the wooden flying boat that flew just once in 1947 and outlived every critic.
TaildraggerThe P-47 Thunderbolt, the heavy 'Jug,' was built around a turbosupercharger and became WWII's toughest fighter-bomber.
TaildraggerHow the de Havilland Mosquito, built from wood in furniture shops, became WWII's fastest bomber and outran every fighter sent to catch it.
TaildraggerThe Swamp Ghost is a B-17E bomber that sat in a New Guinea swamp for 64 years before recovery - now the only intact combat B-17E in the world.
TaildraggerOn March 10, 1967, Captain Bob Pardo pushed a crippled F-4 Phantom out of North Vietnam using his own windscreen - the legendary Pardo's Push.
TaildraggerHow pilot Gail Halvorsen became the Candy Bomber of the Berlin Airlift, dropping candy on handkerchief parachutes over Tempelhof.
TaildraggerBefore the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh spent four barnstorming years wing-walking, parachuting, and teaching himself to fly a surplus Jenny.
TaildraggerHow Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon made the first nonstop transpacific flight in 1931 by jettisoning their landing gear.
TaildraggerIn 1911, Cal Rodgers flew the Vin Fiz across America in 49 days and 19 crashes - the first coast-to-coast flight, though he never won the prize.
TaildraggerHow Bob Reeve, the Glacier Pilot of Valdez, used tidal mudflats and homemade skis to supply Alaska's gold mines by air.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Beryl Markham, The Messenger, and the Night She Flew the Atlantic the Hard Way, East to West, Straight Into the Wind.
TaildraggerHow the Thirteen Black Cats turned 1920s Hollywood stunt flying into a business with a printed price list for every deadly aerial trick.
TaildraggerHow the Soviet 588th 'Night Witches' turned an obsolete wood-and-fabric biplane into a fearsome night bomber on the Eastern Front.
TaildraggerHow Jimmy Doolittle flew the deadly Gee Bee R-1 to a 296 mph world record in 1932 - then walked away from racing for good.
TaildraggerThe Douglas DC-3 first flew in 1935 and still hauls freight worldwide 90 years later - here's why it was never truly replaced.
TaildraggerThe F4U Corsair earned the name 'Whistling Death' for its shrieking dive, and overcame carrier rejection to become one of WWII's deadliest fighters.
TaildraggerRoscoe Turner flew a real lion cub as his copilot and won the Thompson Trophy three times - a record no pilot ever matched.
TaildraggerThe story of Pancho Barnes and the Happy Bottom Riding Club, the desert bar where sound-barrier test pilots learned to be human.
TaildraggerHow a P-38 Lightning buried under 268 feet of Greenland ice for 50 years was melted out, restored, and flown again as Glacier Girl.
TaildraggerHow Douglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 crash, flew Spitfires in the Battle of Britain on two tin legs, and scored 20.5 victories.
TaildraggerHow Talkeetna bush pilot Don Sheldon landed a Super Cub uphill on Denali's glaciers to rescue climbers and map the mountain.
TaildraggerHow the B-29 Superfortress 'Doc' was rescued from a desert bombing range and restored to flight in Wichita after 15 years.
TaildraggerHow Bessie Coleman sailed to France in 1920 to become the first Black woman in the world to earn a pilot's license.
TaildraggerHow Alcock and Brown made the first nonstop transatlantic flight in 1919, eight years before Lindbergh reached Paris.
TaildraggerHow the Schneider Trophy floatplane race and Supermarine's S.6B secretly forged the engineering behind the Spitfire.
TaildraggerHow the Grumman F6F Hellcat, built around combat reports from the Pacific, destroyed Japanese naval air power with a 19-to-1 kill ratio.
TaildraggerHow the Gossamer Condor won the Kremer Prize on August 23, 1977, achieving the first human-powered controlled flight.
TaildraggerHow Claire Chennault turned the outclassed P-40 into a war-winner with the Flying Tigers over China, months before America entered WWII.
TaildraggerHow Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled the Dash 80 prototype over Lake Washington in 1955 and helped launch the jet age.
TaildraggerThe story of Swamp Ghost, a B-17E that sat 64 years in a New Guinea swamp before its 2006 recovery and preservation in Hawaii.
TaildraggerHow wing walker Ormer Locklear and the surplus Curtiss Jenny turned 1919 America into a nation that looked up at the sky.
TaildraggerHow the RAF's Dambusters used Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb to break the Ruhr dams flying at 60 feet in the dark.
TaildraggerIn 1925, Noel Wien flew an open-cockpit Hisso Standard 500 miles from Fairbanks to Nome across Alaska no pilot had ever seen.
TaildraggerFlak-Bait flew 207 combat missions in WWII - and the Smithsonian is preserving her battle damage instead of restoring her to shine.
TaildraggerHow Bob Hoover flew a dead-stick Shrike Commander and poured iced tea mid-roll to teach the pilot's most vital skill: energy management.
TaildraggerHow Beryl Markham became the first person to fly solo nonstop east-to-west across the Atlantic in 1936, into the wind.
TaildraggerHow Alberto Santos-Dumont made Europe's first witnessed powered flight in 1906 and shaped aviation history.
TaildraggerHow one-eyed pilot Wiley Post flew the wooden Winnie Mae around the world twice and pioneered the pressure suit and jet stream.
TaildraggerHow Howard Hughes flew the Spruce Goose one mile off Long Beach in 1947 to prove his critics wrong.
TaildraggerHow the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, the seven-ton 'Jug,' became WWII's toughest fighter and brought more pilots home than any of its rivals.
TaildraggerHow F-4 pilot Bob Pardo used his jet's nose to push a crippled wingman out of North Vietnam in 1967 - one of aviation's boldest maneuvers.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Jerrie Mock, the Spirit of Columbus, and the Ohio Housewife Who Flew a Single-Engine Cessna Solo Around the World in Nineteen Sixty-Four.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Doc, the B-29 Superfortress the Navy Used for Bomb Practice, and the Wichita Volunteers Who Spent Sixteen Years Bringing Her Back to the Sky.
TaildraggerHow Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947 - flying with two cracked ribs and a broomstick to close the hatch.
TaildraggerHow Charles Kingsford Smith and the Southern Cross made the first trans-Pacific flight from the US to Australia in 1928.
TaildraggerHow Bob Reeve turned a Valdez tidal mud flat into a runway, pioneered glacier landings, and invented Alaska bush flying.
TaildraggerHow Douglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan flew a patched-up Curtiss Robin from Brooklyn to Ireland in 1938 and called it a navigation error.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The XB-70 Valkyrie, the Six-Engine Mach Three Bomber That Folded Its Wingtips in Flight and Now Sits Alone at Dayton After a Camera Killed Her Sister.
TaildraggerThe F4U Corsair's iconic gull wing wasn't styling - it was geometry solving a 13-foot propeller problem. Here's the full story.
TaildraggerThe Night Witches flew 23,000 night sorties in wood-and-canvas biplanes, gliding silently over German lines on the WWII Eastern Front.
TaildraggerThe last airworthy Bristol Blenheim was rebuilt three times over nearly 40 years, surviving two crashes to fly again at Duxford.
TaildraggerHow Jimmy Doolittle's 1929 blind flight proved airplanes could fly safely on instruments alone, launching the modern age of IFR aviation.
TaildraggerHow pilot Gail Halvorsen became the Candy Bomber, dropping chocolate on handkerchief parachutes to children during the 1948 Berlin Airlift.
TaildraggerHow Alaska bush pilot Don Sheldon mastered glacier landings on Denali and flew hundreds of daring rescue missions in a fabric Super Cub.
TaildraggerHow Beryl Markham became the first person to fly the Atlantic solo east to west, from England to North America, in September 1936.
TaildraggerIn January 1929, pilots Wop May and Vic Horner flew diphtheria serum 600 miles into Arctic Alberta in an open-cockpit biplane.
TaildraggerThe story of the Rutan Voyager, the featherweight aircraft that flew nonstop around the world in 1986 without refueling.
TaildraggerHow the B-17 Memphis Belle beat the odds to finish 25 missions in 1943 and survived a 13-year restoration to stand in Dayton today.
TaildraggerHow Captain Bob Pearson glided a fuel-starved Air Canada 767 to a dead-stick landing at Gimli in 1983.
TaildraggerHow the Gates Flying Circus and pilot Clyde Pangborn gave a million Americans their first airplane ride in the 1920s.
TaildraggerIn 1924, four US Army biplanes attempted the first flight around the world - two survived to complete the 26,000-mile journey.
TaildraggerHow the Douglas DC-3 made airlines profitable, won a war as the C-47, and became the longest-serving working aircraft ever built.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito was a wooden WWII bomber built by furniture and piano makers that outran the Spitfire and became a legend.
TaildraggerThe airport dog is a fixture of general aviation ramp culture - a greeter, judge of character, and living link to a century of flying tradition.
RampHow Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb and 617 Squadron's Lancaster crews broke Germany's Ruhr dams in the May 1943 Dambusters raid.
TaildraggerHow RAF ace Douglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 crash, flew Spitfires on tin legs, and became a Battle of Britain hero.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Doc, the B-29 Superfortress That Spent Forty Years as a Bombing Target in the Mojave Before a Handful of Volunteers Brought Her Back to the Sky.
TaildraggerIn 1911, Cal Rodgers flew the Vin Fiz biplane across America in 84 days, crashing dozens of times to become the first to cross the continent by air.
TaildraggerThe Boeing Stearman Model 75 trained a generation of WWII pilots - and its tailwheel lessons still make modern pilots better today.
TowerHow John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first nonstop transatlantic flight in 1919, crash-landing a converted bomber in an Irish bog.
TaildraggerHow the Vought F4U Corsair went from 'unsuitable for carriers' to the Marine Corps' legendary Whistling Death fighter.
TaildraggerIn 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith flew the Southern Cross across the Pacific from California to Australia - aviation's greatest overwater feat.
TaildraggerThe story of the Lockheed Constellation, the triple-tailed airliner Howard Hughes ordered in secret and Kelly Johnson shaped into a legend.
TaildraggerHow Jimmy Doolittle won the 1932 Thompson Trophy in the deadly Gee Bee R-1 - then walked away from racing forever.
TaildraggerHow Roscoe Turner, his lion Gilmore, and a self-made uniform led to three Thompson Trophy wins and aviation immortality.
TaildraggerHow Robin Olds and his F-4 Phantoms disguised themselves as bombers to ambush North Vietnamese MiGs on January 2, 1967.
TaildraggerHow Captain Bob Pardo pushed a crippled F-4 Phantom nearly 100 miles over Laos in 1967 using his own windscreen.
TaildraggerHow barnstormer Ormer Locklear pioneered midair plane changes and died filming a stunt for The Skywayman in 1920.
TaildraggerHow 16 P-38 Lightnings flew 400 miles to intercept and kill Admiral Yamamoto on April 18, 1943, arriving one minute early.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Flak-Bait, the Martin B-Twenty-Six Marauder That Flew Two Hundred and Seven Missions and Refused to Die, Now Coming Back to Life Piece by Piece at the Smithsonian.
TaildraggerOn March 6, 1990, SR-71 Blackbird 972 flew Los Angeles to Washington in 64 minutes on its final flight to the Smithsonian.
TaildraggerBessie Coleman crossed the Atlantic and learned French to earn the pilot's license America denied her, becoming the first Black woman to fly.
TaildraggerWiley Post, a one-eyed Oklahoma roughneck, flew solo around the world in 1933 and pioneered the pressure suit and jet stream.
TaildraggerIn December 1986, Voyager flew nonstop around the world without refueling - the story of the last great first in aviation.
TaildraggerHow Tom Reilly spent a decade rebuilding the world's only airworthy XP-82 Twin Mustang - and why its propellers spin the way they do.
TaildraggerThe Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes' all-wood flying boat, flew once for under a minute in 1947 and now lives in McMinnville, Oregon.
TaildraggerHow NASA turned a Gulfstream II business jet into the Shuttle Training Aircraft to teach astronauts the impossible one-shot landing.
VectorThe Piper J-3 Cub taught most of America to fly on 65 horsepower, then went to war as the L-4 Grasshopper artillery spotter.
TaildraggerHow the $50 war-surplus Curtiss JN-4 Jenny launched the 1920s barnstorming era and put a generation of Americans in the sky.
TaildraggerHow Louise Thaden won the 1929 Women's Air Derby, the cross-country race newspapers mocked as the Powder Puff Derby.
TaildraggerHow Pancho Barnes went from fastest woman alive to running the desert club where test pilots celebrated breaking the sound barrier.
TaildraggerOtto Lilienthal made over 2,000 glider flights in the 1890s, proving human flight was possible and inspiring the Wright brothers.
TaildraggerHow Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb and 617 Squadron broke the Ruhr dams flying at 60 feet in the dark on the night of May 16–17, 1943.
TaildraggerHow British aerobatic champion Neil Williams saved a Zlin with a folded wing in 1970 by flying it inverted and landing upside down.
TaildraggerHow North Dakota schoolteacher Carl Ben Eielson flew Alaska's first airmail, crossed the Arctic by air, and vanished over Siberian ice.
TaildraggerOn December 20, 1943, German ace Franz Stigler escorted a crippled B-17 to safety instead of shooting it down - the true story behind A Higher Call.
TaildraggerHow Douglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan flew a $310 Curtiss Robin across the Atlantic in 1938 and blamed a backwards compass.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The Night Witches, the 588th Night Bomber Regiment and the Wood-and-Canvas Biplanes Soviet Women Flew With the Engine Cut.
TaildraggerHow the Granville Brothers built the deadly Gee Bee R-1 around a huge engine, and how Jimmy Doolittle rode it to win the 1932 Thompson Trophy.
TaildraggerIn August 1909 the U.S. Army bought its first airplane, the Wright Military Flyer, for $30,000 after the deadly Fort Myer trials.
TaildraggerThe Douglas DC-3 was the first airliner to profit on passengers alone, then won a war as the C-47 - and it's still flying today.
TaildraggerIn August 1955, test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled Boeing's one-and-only 707 prototype over Lake Washington and helped sell the jet age.
TaildraggerHow Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 on Oct 14, 1947 - with two cracked ribs and a sawed-off broomstick.
TaildraggerHow a P-38 Lightning was recovered from 268 feet of Greenland ice and restored to flight 50 years after the Lost Squadron went down.
TaildraggerHow the Gates Flying Circus and Clyde 'Upside-Down' Pangborn sold America its first airplane ride for a nickel and shaped a generation of pilots.
TaildraggerIn 1911, Cal Rodgers flew the Vin Fiz coast-to-coast in 49 days - the first flight across America, achieved after the prize was already lost.
TaildraggerHow Bob Hoover poured iced tea while rolling a twin-engine Shrike Commander upside down - and what it teaches every pilot about energy management.
TaildraggerThe F4U Corsair's inverted gull wing wasn't styling - it solved the ground-clearance problem created by its massive engine and propeller.
TowerHow Voyager and its crew flew nonstop around the world in 1986 - no landings, no refueling, and 18 gallons to spare.
TaildraggerHow the Schneider Trophy seaplane races and the Supermarine S.6B gave birth to the Spitfire that saved Britain in 1940.
TaildraggerHow Bryan Allen pedaled the Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel in 1979, achieving the first human-powered crossing.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The de Havilland Mosquito, the Wooden Wonder Built by Furniture Makers That Outran Every Fighter in the Sky.
TaildraggerThe Cornfield Bomber is an F-106 that recovered from a flat spin and belly-landed itself in Montana in 1970 after its pilot ejected.
TaildraggerHow the RAF sent one aging Avro Vulcan and eleven tankers nearly 8,000 miles to bomb Port Stanley in the longest raid ever flown.
TaildraggerHow RAF ace Douglas Bader lost both legs, flew Spitfires on tin legs, and had the enemy parachute him a spare.
TaildraggerHow Doc, a B-29 that sat 40 years as a desert missile target, was restored to flight by Wichita volunteers over 16 years.
TaildraggerHow Bessie Coleman became the first Black woman to earn a pilot's license - by learning French and sailing to France when no U.S. school would teach her.
TaildraggerThe Swamp Ghost, a B-17E that ditched in a New Guinea swamp in 1942, sat untouched for 64 years before its recovery.
TaildraggerThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was WWII's heaviest single-engine fighter - a 7-ton 'Jug' built to dive faster and survive more than any rival.
TaildraggerHow showman Roscoe Turner and his flying lion cub Gilmore won three Thompson Trophies and helped sell America on aviation.
TaildraggerThe true story of Pardo's Push, when an F-4 pilot used his windshield to shove a crippled wingman out of North Vietnam in 1967.
TaildraggerHow the Dambusters used Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb to breach Germany's Ruhr dams in 1943 - the physics, the flying, and the cost.
TaildraggerHow Noel Wien flew a brakeless 1924 Standard biplane across an unmapped Alaska and wrote the rulebook for bush flying.
TaildraggerHow Jacqueline Cochran rose from a Florida sawmill camp to set more aviation records than any pilot in history.
TaildraggerFlak-Bait, the B-26 Marauder that survived 207 combat missions, is being conserved - not restored - at the Smithsonian with every scar intact.
TaildraggerIn June 1919, Alcock and Brown flew the first nonstop transatlantic flight, eight years before Lindbergh.
TaildraggerHow one-eyed pilot Wiley Post flew solo around the world in 1933, discovered the jet stream, and helped invent the pressure suit.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The Vought F4U Corsair, the Bent-Wing Bird the Marines Called Whistling Death and the Navy Said Would Never Land on a Carrier.
TaildraggerThe story of the Memphis Belle, the B-17 that flew 25 missions over Europe and survived a 13-year restoration to reach the museum floor.
TaildraggerHow 'That's All, Brother,' the C-47 that led the D-Day airborne assault, was saved from a Wisconsin scrapyard and restored to flight.
TaildraggerThe story of Robin Olds, his legendary mustache, and Operation Bolo - the 1967 trick that downed seven MiGs over Hanoi in 12 minutes.
TaildraggerHow airmail pilot Elrey Jeppesen turned a 20-cent notebook into the approach charts flown in nearly every cockpit on Earth.
TaildraggerHow Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on Oct 14, 1947 with two cracked ribs and a sawed-off broom handle nobody knew about.
TaildraggerThe XB-70 Valkyrie was a Mach 3 bomber; only one survives after a 1966 photo-shoot collision destroyed its twin. Here's the full story.
TaildraggerHow two Ohio bicycle makers solved control - not power - to achieve the first flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.
TaildraggerThe Swamp Ghost is a B-17E that ditched in a New Guinea swamp in 1942 and sat intact for 50 years before recovery.
TaildraggerThe only airworthy Bristol Blenheim survived two crashes and three rebuilds over nearly 40 years to fly again at Duxford.
TaildraggerThe North American X-15 flew to Mach 6.7 and the edge of space, pioneering the hypersonic and reentry technology behind every spacecraft that followed.
VectorHow Jimmy Doolittle tamed the deadly Gee Bee Model R to win the 1932 Thompson Trophy and set a 296 mph world speed record.
TaildraggerHow Henry Ford's corrugated-metal Ford Trimotor, the 'Tin Goose,' became America's first practical airliner and taught a nation to fly.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito was a wooden WWII aircraft so fast that enemy fighters couldn't catch it, serving in nearly every combat role.
TaildraggerHow the war-surplus Curtiss JN-4 'Jenny' gave 1920s America its first taste of flight and launched the barnstorming era.
TaildraggerHow pilot Gail Halvorsen became the Candy Bomber, dropping chocolate on parachutes to children during the 1948 Berlin Airlift.
TaildraggerHow the Red Baron really fell on April 21, 1918 - and why the evidence points to a gunner on the ground, not Roy Brown.
TaildraggerOn July 4, 1908, Glenn Curtiss flew the June Bug over a kilometer before official judges - the first publicly documented flight in America.
TaildraggerHow Bob Reeve, the Glacier Pilot of Valdez, used homemade stainless-steel skis to land on Alaska's glaciers and supply remote gold mines.
TaildraggerHow Douglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan flew a patched-up Curtiss Robin from Brooklyn to Ireland in 1938 and blamed a compass.
TaildraggerHow the Vought F4U Corsair's inverted gull wing solved a propeller problem and made it one of WWII's deadliest fighters.
TaildraggerHow the 1967 USS Forrestal fire killed 134 sailors and permanently changed how the U.S. Navy fights fire at sea.
TaildraggerThe Night Witches flew plywood biplanes over Nazi lines at night with engines off - one of WWII's bravest aviation stories.
TaildraggerThe Lockheed Constellation was Howard Hughes's triple-tail airliner that shrank America and the Atlantic before jets ended its reign.
TaildraggerThe C-2A Greyhound flew its final flight on July 28, 2026, ending 60 years of carrier onboard delivery for the U.S. Navy.
TowerRadio Hangar explores Tex Johnston Rolls the Dash Eighty, the Day Boeing's Chief Test Pilot Barrel-Rolled a Jet Transport Over Lake Washington to Sell the Jet Age.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Roscoe Turner, the Powder-Blue Colonel, and Gilmore the Lion Cub Who Rode Shotgun Through the Golden Age of Air Racing.
TaildraggerHow Ormer Locklear, the King of the Wing Walkers, pioneered plane-to-plane transfers and died filming a night stunt in 1920.
TaildraggerHow Flak-Bait, a B-26 Marauder, flew a record 207 combat missions in WWII and survives today at the Smithsonian.
TaildraggerHow Alaskan bush pilot Don Sheldon pioneered glacier landings on Denali and flew death-defying high-altitude rescues in a Piper Super Cub.
TaildraggerHow volunteers pulled the B-29 Doc from a desert bombing range and spent 18 years restoring her into the world's second flyable Superfortress.
TaildraggerHow Bessie Coleman crossed an ocean and learned French to become the first Black woman in the world to earn a pilot's license.
TaildraggerThe story of the Swamp Ghost, a B-17E that sat in a New Guinea swamp for 64 years before its 2006 recovery to Pearl Harbor.
TaildraggerOn March 6, 1990, an SR-71 Blackbird crossed the US in 67 minutes 54 seconds on its final flight to the Smithsonian.
TaildraggerThe Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka at the Udvar-Hazy Center was a rocket-powered suicide weapon - here's its grim history and why it matters.
TaildraggerHow Jimmy Doolittle tamed the deadly Gee Bee R-1 to win the 1932 Thompson Trophy and set a world speed record at Cleveland.
TaildraggerHow the Douglas DC-3 made air travel profitable, won a war as the Gooney Bird, and still flies for a living today.
TaildraggerOn July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber hit the Empire State Building in fog - and elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a 75-story fall.
TaildraggerThe true story of Pardo's Push: how an F-4 pilot used his windscreen and a tailhook to shove a fuel-starved Phantom out of North Vietnam in 1967.
TaildraggerThe 1943 Ploesti raid sent 178 low-flying B-24 Liberators against Hitler's oil, earning five Medals of Honor at a staggering cost.
TaildraggerHow 617 Squadron used Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb to breach the Ruhr dams in 1943's Operation Chastise.
TaildraggerBefore crossing the Atlantic in 1927, Charles Lindbergh spent four years barnstorming the Great Plains as a wing-walker and parachute jumper.
TaildraggerHow schoolteacher Carl Ben Eielson flew Alaska's first airmail, crossed both poles, and vanished on the Siberian ice at age 32.
TaildraggerThe story of Cal Rodgers and the Vin Fiz, the first airplane to cross America in 1911, after 49 days and countless crashes.
TaildraggerThe story of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the Aeropostale mail pilot who wrote The Little Prince and vanished over the Mediterranean in 1944.
TaildraggerHow Voyager and the Rutan team flew nonstop around the world in 1986, landing with just 18 gallons of fuel to spare.
TaildraggerThe story of the F4U Corsair, the gull-winged 'Whistling Death' the Navy nearly abandoned before the Marines made it a WWII legend.
TaildraggerHow the 65-horsepower Piper J-3 Cub taught America to fly and trained the pilots who won World War II.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle survived 25 WWII missions, then a 13-year restoration returned the famous B-17 to display at the Air Force Museum in Dayton.
TaildraggerHow Captain Bob Pearson glided a fuel-starved Air Canada 767 to a dead-stick landing at Gimli using a slip every student pilot learns.
TaildraggerThe Gates Flying Circus gave over a million Americans their first airplane ride and helped turn a nation onto flight in the 1920s.
TaildraggerHow Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers used shark-nosed P-40 Warhawks and unconventional tactics to beat Japanese airpower over Burma and China in 1941-42.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Comet launched the jet age on July 27, 1949, then its square windows revealed the deadly lesson of metal fatigue.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The Bristol Blenheim, the Only One Left Flying, and the British Light Bomber That Was Restored Three Times Because Her People Refused to Let Her Die.
TaildraggerColonel Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times, flew with a pet lion, and became aviation's greatest showman.
TaildraggerHow Eugene Ely flew a Curtiss Pusher off USS Birmingham in 1910 and landed on USS Pennsylvania in 1911, inventing naval aviation.
TaildraggerHow broke barnstormer Bob Reeve turned Alaska's tidal mud and moving glaciers into runways and became aviation's legendary Glacier Pilot.
TaildraggerHow Beryl Markham became the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo east-to-west, crash-landing in a Nova Scotia bog in 1936.
TaildraggerHow Douglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan flew a $310 Curtiss Robin from Brooklyn to Dublin in 1938 and called it an accident.
TaildraggerHow the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt 'Jug' - a seven-ton fighter - outdove enemies and brought its pilots home riddled with holes.
TaildraggerThe Night Witches flew obsolete Po-2 biplanes into WWII combat, cutting their engines to glide silently onto targets in the dark.
TaildraggerThe F-86 Sabre dominated MiG Alley in the Korean War until jet combat ended with the armistice on July 27, 1953.
TaildraggerThe 1924 Douglas World Cruiser Chicago made the first flight around the world - and still hangs in the Smithsonian today.
TaildraggerHow the slow, homely Douglas SBD Dauntless sank four Japanese carriers at Midway and turned the Pacific War in five minutes.
TaildraggerHow the C-47 that led the D-Day airborne invasion was rescued from a turboprop conversion line and restored to fly over Normandy again.
TaildraggerIn 1958-59, two men kept a Cessna 172 airborne over Las Vegas for 64 days without landing - a record that still stands today.
TaildraggerHow Pancho Barnes became the fastest woman on earth and built the desert club where test pilots broke the sound barrier.
TaildraggerHow barnstormer Ormer Locklear and the surplus Curtiss Jenny sold America its first airplane ride after World War I.
TaildraggerOn September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle flew from takeoff to landing entirely on instruments, launching the age of instrument flight.
TaildraggerHow Talkeetna bush pilot Don Sheldon flew an ordinary Cessna 180 on skis onto Denali's glaciers to rescue stranded climbers.
TaildraggerHow Bessie Coleman crossed the Atlantic to become the first Black and Native American woman to earn a pilot's license.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The Spirit of St. Louis, Lindbergh's Wicker-Seat Gamble Across the Atlantic, and the Full-Scale Ryan Hanging in the EAA Museum at Oshkosh.
TaildraggerHow Betty Skelton and her red Pitts Special 'Little Stinker' broke aviation's barriers with inverted ribbon cuts and 17 records.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Voyager, the Rutan Brothers, and Jeana Yeager - the Homebuilt That Flew Around the World Without Stopping, Told From the Canard Rows at Oshkosh.
TaildraggerHow the 1929 Travel Air Mystery Ship beat the U.S. Army and Navy at Cleveland and pushed American aviation toward the monoplane.
TaildraggerThe Gee Bee Super Sportster earned a killer reputation, but Doolittle and Delmar Benjamin proved it was demanding, not evil.
TaildraggerA bipartisan bill, the BRRRRT Act, aims to halt the A-10 Warthog's retirement until a certified replacement is operational.
TowerOn July 25, 1909, Louis Blériot flew a 25-hp monoplane across the English Channel, ending England's age as an unreachable island.
TaildraggerHow Gladys Ingle of the Thirteen Black Cats changed an airplane wheel in mid-air, and why barnstorming built modern aviation.
TaildraggerThe 1942 Doolittle Raid launched 16 B-25 bombers off the USS Hornet to strike Tokyo, a mission that reshaped the Pacific war.
TaildraggerHow the Gates Flying Circus sold over a million Americans their first airplane ride for a dollar and launched the barnstorming era.
TaildraggerHow Glacier Girl, a P-38 Lightning, was recovered from 268 feet of Greenland ice 50 years after crash-landing and flew again in 2002.
TaildraggerHow Wiley Post, a one-eyed Oklahoma pilot, flew the Winnie Mae solo around the world in 1933 and pioneered the pressure suit.
TaildraggerThe Beechcraft Staggerwing's backward-staggered wings made this 1930s luxury biplane faster than fighters - here's the real story.
TaildraggerHow Alaska bush pilot Don Sheldon pioneered glacier landings on Denali and rewrote the rules of backcountry flying.
TaildraggerHow Curtis Pitts and pilot Betty Skelton turned a homemade Florida biplane into the airplane that taught the world to roll.
TaildraggerHow Benny Howard's homebuilt Mister Mulligan won both the 1935 Bendix and Thompson trophies - the only airplane ever to do it.
TaildraggerThe story of the Gee Bee Super Sportster, the barrel-shaped racer Jimmy Doolittle flew to 296 mph in 1932 - and why it wasn't the murderer history claimed.
TaildraggerHow Canadian bush pilots wrote the spec for the de Havilland Beaver in 1947, creating a floatplane that still works worldwide today.
TaildraggerHow $50 surplus Curtiss JN-4 'Jenny' biplanes launched the barnstorming era and put ordinary Americans in the sky.
TaildraggerHow Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 on October 14, 1947 - with two cracked ribs and a sawed-off broomstick.
TaildraggerHow Douglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan flew a patched-up Curtiss Robin from New York to Ireland in 1938 and blamed his compass.
TaildraggerHow Glyn Powell's hand-built molds and New Zealand's Avspecs team returned the de Havilland Mosquito to flight after 16 years grounded.
TaildraggerHow the Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment - the 'Night Witches' - flew obsolete canvas biplanes on 23,000+ night raids in WWII.
TaildraggerThe Douglas DC-3 first flew in 1935, made airlines profitable, helped win WWII as the C-47, and still flies today.
TaildraggerHow the Vought F4U Corsair's bent inverted gull wing solved an engineering problem and earned it the fearsome name Whistling Death.
TaildraggerHow showman-pilot Roscoe Turner flew with a pet lion named Gilmore and became the only man to win the Thompson Trophy three times.
TaildraggerHow F-4 pilot Bob Pardo pushed a crippled Phantom nearly 90 miles to safety over Vietnam in 1967, a feat known as Pardo's Push.
TaildraggerThe story of Ormer Locklear, the first wing walker, who invented aerial stunting in barnstorming's golden age before dying at age 28.
TaildraggerBefore Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong was a Navy combat pilot and X-15 test pilot - and that flying is what got him to the moon.
TaildraggerHow a P-38 Lightning buried under 268 feet of Greenland ice for 50 years was recovered and flew again as Glacier Girl.
TaildraggerHow RAF ace Douglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 crash and still flew the Battle of Britain on two artificial legs.
TaildraggerHow Alaskan bush pilot Don Sheldon mastered glacier landings on Denali in a Piper Super Cub, saving stranded climbers and pioneering ski-plane flying.
TaildraggerHow Cal Rodgers flew the Vin Fiz coast-to-coast in 1911, surviving 16 crashes to become the first person to fly across America.
TaildraggerThe Vought F4U Corsair overcame early carrier rejection to achieve an 11-to-1 kill ratio in the Pacific and serve through the Korean War, with over 12,600 built across eleven years.
TaildraggerThe Swamp Ghost is a B-17E bomber that crash-landed in a Papua New Guinea swamp in 1942 and sat preserved and largely intact for 64 years before recovery.
TaildraggerHow a 1929 six-day endurance flight over Los Angeles proved aerial refueling was operationally viable and laid the strategic foundation for American airpower in World War II.
TaildraggerThe all-female 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew over 23,000 combat sorties in WWI-era Po-2 biplanes, earning the German nickname 'Night Witches.'
TaildraggerRoscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times - the only pilot in history to do so - combining elite flying skill with deliberate, strategic self-promotion during aviation's golden age.
TaildraggerIn 1928, bush pilot Punch Dickins flew a 3,900-mile survey of Canada's unmapped Barren Lands, earning the McKee Trophy and opening the Northwest Territories to regular air service.
TaildraggerOperation Tidal Wave on August 1, 1943 sent 178 B-24 Liberators against Romania's Ploesti oil refineries at treetop level, producing five Medals of Honor in a single mission.
TaildraggerLincoln Beachey was America's greatest early aviator, whose death-defying stunts from 1910 to 1915 transformed the airplane from curiosity to cultural icon.
TaildraggerGlenn Curtiss won history's first international air speed race in 1909, invented naval aviation, and built the trainer that gave WWI pilots their wings - all while fighting the patent war that nearly grounded American aviation.
TaildraggerDoc the B-29 Superfortress spent 42 years abandoned in the Mojave Desert before volunteers returned her to the Kansas skies where she was born.
TaildraggerBeryl Markham was the first person to fly solo nonstop from England to North America on September 4, 1936, battling headwinds alone for 21 hours and 25 minutes.
TaildraggerOn September 1, 1974, the SR-71 Blackbird crossed the Atlantic in 1 hour 54 minutes - a record no aircraft has broken in over 50 years.
TaildraggerHow the P-51 Mustang's Merlin engine and 1,100-mile range broke the Luftwaffe and rescued Allied strategic bombing from catastrophic failure in 1944.
TaildraggerThe Grumman F6F Hellcat reversed American fortunes in the Pacific by out-engineering the Zero, achieving a 19-to-1 kill ratio and accounting for over 60% of all naval air victories.
TaildraggerThe Dornier Do 335 Pfeil was the fastest piston-engined fighter of WWII, reaching ~475 mph - but only around 40 were ever built.
TaildraggerThe 1927 Dole Derby offered $35,000 in prize money for a nonstop flight from Oakland to Honolulu, but the race became one of aviation's most sobering disasters.
TaildraggerOn November 22, 1935, Pan Am's China Clipper completed the first scheduled transpacific flight, covering 8,000 miles from California to Manila in 59 hours and 48 minutes of flying time.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear of Greenville, Texas invented airplane-to-airplane transfers and became barnstorming's first true showman before dying at 28 in 1920.
TaildraggerOn the night of May 16, 1943, RAF 617 Squadron flew modified Lancasters at sixty feet above German reservoirs to deliver Barnes Wallis's revolutionary bouncing bomb against the Ruhr Valley dams.
TaildraggerFlak Bait, the B-26 Marauder that flew 207 combat missions over Europe, is being fully restored at the Smithsonian with all 1,100+ battle damage patches preserved.
TaildraggerBessie Coleman became the world's first Black female pilot in 1921 after every American flight school turned her away - so she crossed the Atlantic to earn her license in France.
TaildraggerThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt outscored every Allied fighter group in the European theater - here's why the heaviest single-engine fighter of WWII remains underappreciated.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle B-17 survived 25 combat missions over Europe, then 40 years of outdoor neglect, before a 12-year restoration returned her to museum condition in 2018.
TaildraggerThe Hughes H-4 Hercules holds the record for the largest wingspan of any aircraft ever flown at 320 feet, and has called Oregon's Evergreen Aviation Museum home since 2001.
TaildraggerThe Gee Bee Super Sportster was the fastest piston racer of the 1930s - a machine so demanding it required genius to fly and cost its creators everything to build.
TaildraggerOn August 7, 1955, Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston rolled a prototype jet airliner twice over Lake Washington, executing one of the most consequential demonstrations in aviation history.
TaildraggerSix iconic WWII warbirds explained on America's 250th anniversary - from the Mustang's Merlin swap to the Dauntless strikes that turned the Pacific War.
TowerOn April 18, 1943, sixteen P-38 Lightnings flew 435 miles over open ocean to intercept and kill Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of Pearl Harbor, using decoded Japanese communications.
TaildraggerJohn Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight on June 14–15, 1919 - eight years before Lindbergh - in an open-cockpit WWI bomber.
TaildraggerOn July 17, 1938, Douglas Corrigan flew from New York to Ireland on a flight plan filed for Los Angeles - and spent 57 years insisting it was a compass error.
TaildraggerWiley Post used a $1,800 workers' comp settlement to learn to fly, then circled the globe twice, discovered the jet stream, and invented the pressure suit.
TaildraggerThe F4U Corsair went from Navy reject to one of WWII's most feared fighters - built around a massive engine, refined by Marines, and flying combat missions into 1969.
TaildraggerOn December 14, 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager completed the first nonstop, unrefueled flight around the world in the Rutan Voyager, covering 25,000 miles in nine days.
TaildraggerThe Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment - the Night Witches - flew 23,000 WWII combat sorties in fabric biplanes, navigating at night by compass and clock alone.
TaildraggerThe Curtiss NC-4 crossed the North Atlantic in May 1919 - eight years before Lindbergh - carrying six Navy men 1,500 miles by dead reckoning alone.
TaildraggerHow Doc's Friends spent 16 years and 300,000 volunteer hours rescuing a B-29 Superfortress from the Mojave Desert and returning it to Wichita's skies.
TaildraggerHarold Gillam was Alaska's most technically disciplined bush pilot - and his final flight in January 1943 became one of the territory's most haunting stories.
TaildraggerOn July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanished over the Pacific during their final approach to Howland Island - a radio failure that aviation still learns from today.
TaildraggerQatar's donated Boeing 747-8 has now carried President Trump, serving as a bridge aircraft while Boeing completes the long-delayed VC-25B replacement.
TowerOn July 2, 1900, Ferdinand von Zeppelin's LZ-1 made its first flight over Lake Constance - predating the Wright Brothers by three years and launching the world's first commercial airline.
TaildraggerThe Lockheed Constellation revolutionized transatlantic travel with its pressurized cabin, 300+ mph cruise speed, and unmistakable triple-tail silhouette - and a design story that's as compelling as the aircraft itself.
TaildraggerHow Wilfrid 'Wop' May survived being chased by the Red Baron in 1918 and went on to complete a life-saving mercy flight through the Canadian wilderness in 1929.
TaildraggerOn October 14, 1943, the Eighth Air Force launched 291 B-17s against Schweinfurt's ball bearing factories and lost 60 aircraft and 600 men in a single day.
TaildraggerThe SR-71 Blackbird's preflight wasn't just about the aircraft - it was a full physiological preparation protocol that treated the pilot as mission-critical hardware.
TowerOn July 21, 1921, Army Air Service bombers sank the German battleship Ostfriesland in 21 minutes, validating Billy Mitchell's controversial claim that airpower had made the battleship obsolete.
TaildraggerBefore crossing the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh spent years as a barnstormer, building the real-world skills that made his historic 1927 flight possible.
TaildraggerThe 1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision killed 128 people and directly triggered the creation of the Federal Aviation Administration - reshaping every clearance, squawk code, and radar handoff in use today.
TaildraggerOn May 24, 1988, TACA Flight 110's crew deadsticked a powerless Boeing 737 onto a Louisiana levee, saving all 45 people aboard.
TaildraggerThe Douglas DC-3 transformed commercial aviation in 1936 and went on to serve in WWII, the Berlin Airlift, and Vietnam - with hundreds still flying today.
TaildraggerOn April 6, 1924, four U.S. Army biplanes departed Seattle to attempt the first aerial circumnavigation of Earth - 26,000 miles with no radio nav, no weather radar, and no margin for error.
TaildraggerThe North American X-15 set a crewed aircraft speed record of Mach 6.72 in 1967 that still stands, and flew thirteen missions above the recognized boundary of space.
VectorThe North American XB-70 Valkyrie was America's most technically advanced Cold War bomber - capable of Mach 3 at 70,000 feet but cancelled before entering service.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear climbed out of a moving Curtiss Jenny in 1917 to fix a loose radiator cap - and accidentally invented American barnstorming.
TaildraggerThe SR-71 Blackbird flew over 3,500 Cold War missions at Mach 3.2 and was never once shot down - here's the full story of how it was built and why it worked.
TaildraggerGlacier Girl is a P-38 Lightning recovered from 270 feet of Greenland ice in 1992 and restored to flying condition, taking to the sky again in 2002.
TaildraggerLincoln Beachey flew before 17 million Americans and was called the greatest aviator who ever lived by Orville Wright - before dying at age 28.
TaildraggerIn 1924, eight U.S. Army Air Service airmen became the first to circle the globe by air, crossing 26,000 miles in open-cockpit biplanes before Charles Lindbergh ever left the ground.
TaildraggerCharles Carpenter, an Illinois schoolteacher turned Army aviator, bolted six bazookas to a Piper Cub and hunted German tanks across France in 1944.
TaildraggerBeryl Markham flew solo from England to Nova Scotia in 1936 - east into the prevailing winds, at night - and wrote what Hemingway called the best prose he'd ever read.
TaildraggerBob Reeve pioneered glacier runway operations in 1930s Alaska, turning tidal mud flats and remote ice fields into reliable supply routes for Wrangell Mountain mines.
TaildraggerThe U.S. Air Force is keeping 54 A-10 Thunderbolt IIs in service following Operation Epic Fury, a live-fire demonstration that made the case for the Warthog's continued relevance.
TowerHow the Boeing 747-200's upgraded engines eliminated the mandatory Anchorage fuel stop and permanently reshaped transpacific air travel.
TowerThe first solo shirt-cut is aviation's oldest student milestone ritual, tracing back over 100 years to WWI-era open-cockpit training and the moment an instructor no longer needed to hold on.
RampOperation Vittles - the 1948 Berlin Airlift - delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies across 277,000 flights to prove airpower could sustain life, not just end it.
TaildraggerThe Lockheed P-38 Lightning was WWII's most distinctive fighter - twin-engine, twin-boom, and with the range to change the outcome of the Pacific war.
TaildraggerOn September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle completed the world's first fully blind flight at Mitchell Field - the 15-minute demonstration that invented IFR.
TaildraggerOn August 1, 1943, 177 B-24 Liberators flew at treetop level into the most defended target in Europe, earning five Medals of Honor in a single afternoon.
TaildraggerHow the Gates Flying Circus flew over a million Americans in the 1920s and built the cultural foundation for commercial aviation.
TaildraggerHarold Gillam, Alaska's legendary Ghost Pilot, vanished in January 1943 near Ketchikan - and four survivors endured 31 days in the wreckage before rescue.
TaildraggerOn May 16, 1919, the Curtiss NC-4 became the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic Ocean - a feat that history has largely handed to someone else.
TaildraggerOn June 4, 1942, a fuel-starved squadron of SBD Dauntless dive bombers sank three Japanese fleet carriers in roughly five minutes, permanently shifting the balance of power in the Pacific War.
TaildraggerHow SBD Dauntless BuNo 2106, a Battle of Midway veteran, spent 50 years in Lake Michigan and was recovered and restored.
TaildraggerOn June 20, 1939, Erich Warsitz flew the Heinkel He 176 - history's first aircraft powered by rocket alone.
TaildraggerHow Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon flew the first nonstop Pacific crossing in 1931 - and climbed onto the wing mid-flight to survive it.
TaildraggerOn June 19, 1944, U.S. Hellcats destroyed roughly 350 Japanese aircraft over the Philippine Sea, ending Japanese naval air power for good.
TaildraggerIn 1911, Cal Rodgers became the first person to fly across America in the Vin Fiz, surviving 49 days and 16 crashes.
TaildraggerHow Valery Chkalov and the ANT-25 flew nonstop over the North Pole from Moscow to Washington State in June 1937.
TaildraggerHow Charles Blair flew a red P-51 Mustang solo across the North Pole in 1951 using sun-compass navigation.
TaildraggerThe Spruce Goose flew just 26 seconds on November 2, 1947 - here's the story of Howard Hughes' birch-built H-4 Hercules.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The Vulcan howl and XH558, the last Avro Vulcan to fly the airshow circuit.
TaildraggerHow WWI ace Eddie Rickenbacker survived 24 days adrift in the Pacific - and why he believed willpower, not equipment, decided who lived.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores Amelia Earhart and the Friendship, the gold trimotor that crossed the Atlantic on June seventeenth, nineteen twenty-eight.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The Cleveland National Air Races and Jimmy Doolittle winning the first Thompson Trophy in the Travel Air Mystery Ship, nineteen twenty-nine.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores That's All, Brother and the C-forty-seven that led the D-Day invasion, rescued from a Wisconsin boneyard the week before the scrappers came.
TaildraggerWhy some carriers are 'airlines,' some 'airways,' and some just 'air' - the maritime and railroad roots behind aviation's oldest words.
TowerRadio Hangar explores The Air Force Retires the Last A-10 Warthog and What Actually Fills Its Close Air Support Role.
TowerThe true story of Franz Stigler, the German ace who escorted a crippled B-17 to safety instead of shooting it down in December 1943.
TaildraggerThe crew of B-17 'Old 666' earned two Medals of Honor and a DSC for every man - the most decorated flight in U.S. history.
TaildraggerThe B-52 Stratofortress has outlived roughly 20 retirement attempts and may serve until age 100, thanks to its overbuilt airframe and standoff-weapon mission.
TowerOn June 15, 1916, Bill Boeing test-flew the B&W seaplane himself - the first airplane Boeing ever built.
TaildraggerOn June 13, 1944, the V-1 buzz bomb struck London, becoming the first cruise missile used in combat and changing air warfare forever.
TaildraggerThe Boeing 747SP sacrificed fuselage length to achieve ultra-long-range nonstop flights no other airliner could match in the 1970s.
TowerSoviet bombers featured glass noses because the USSR lacked compact radar technology, placing human navigators where Western jets mounted radar.
TowerOn June 7, 1939, the Dixie Clipper made history as the first scheduled transatlantic passenger flight from New York to Europe.
TaildraggerSpitfire ML407 survived D-Day, decades of neglect, and personal tragedy to become one of the world's most storied warbirds.
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.
TaildraggerOn June 5, 1944, over 800 C-47 crews flew paratroopers into Normandy through flak and cloud, launching the D-Day invasion.
TaildraggerNoel Wien's 1924 flight from Anchorage to Fairbanks in an open-cockpit biplane changed Alaska forever.
TaildraggerOn June 4, 1783, the Montgolfier brothers launched the first public hot air balloon flight in Annonay, France, launching the age of human flight.
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.
TaildraggerOn June 2, 1910, Charles Rolls completed the first nonstop round-trip flight across the English Channel - and died flying 39 days later.
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.
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.
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.
TowerFrom the de Havilland Comet to the Boeing 737 MAX, these controversial aircraft exposed deadly flaws that reshaped aviation safety forever.
TowerOn May 28, 1940, RAF fighters fought and died over Dunkirk in battles the soldiers below never saw.
TaildraggerOn May 27, 1958, the McDonnell F-4 Phantom made its first flight - an unwanted jet that became the defining fighter of a generation.
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.
TowerHow sixteen P-38 Lightnings flew 400 miles at wave-top height to intercept and kill Admiral Yamamoto in 1943.
TaildraggerHow volunteers rescued the B-29 Fifi from a Navy bombing range and restored her to flying condition against impossible odds.
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 Navy Curtiss NC-4 completed the first transatlantic flight on May 22, 1919, a milestone most people wrongly attribute to later aviators.
TaildraggerHurricane R4118, a Battle of Britain combat veteran with 49 sorties, was recovered from India and restored to airworthy condition.
TaildraggerThe B-52 Stratofortress has survived 15 retirement proposals and will fly past 2040 thanks to cost, versatility, and a massive upgrade program.
TowerOn May 21, 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, landing in Ireland after nearly 15 harrowing hours.
TaildraggerOn May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh departed Roosevelt Field in the Spirit of Saint Louis for the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight.
TaildraggerOn May 19, 1919, Harry Hawker and Kenneth Mackenzie-Grieve ditched in the North Atlantic, failing to cross but proving it could be done.
TaildraggerDouglas Corrigan 'accidentally' flew from New York to Ireland in 1938 after being denied permission three times.
TaildraggerThe Bristol Blenheim flew Britain's first offensive mission of WWII, then vanished - until one man spent 31 years bringing her back.
TaildraggerThe 1980 Mount Saint Helens eruption exposed aviation's vulnerability to volcanic ash and sparked the global warning systems pilots rely on today.
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 last surviving Dornier Do 17, a WWII German bomber, was recovered from the English Channel in 2013 after 73 years underwater.
TaildraggerMax Conrad made over 200 solo ocean crossings in single-engine Pipers, earning the title Flying Grandfather.
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.
TowerOn May 14, 1908, mechanic Charlie Furnas became the first airplane passenger in America at Kill Devil Hills, NC.
TaildraggerThe Kee Bird B-29 survived 48 years on a frozen Greenland lake only to burn during its rescue attempt moments before takeoff.
TaildraggerOn May 13, 1913, Igor Sikorsky flew the first four-engine airplane, defying experts who called multi-engine flight impossible.
TaildraggerJimmy Stewart flew twenty combat missions over Nazi Germany in a B-24 Liberator, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross twice.
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.
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.
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.
TaildraggerOn May 11, 1926, the airship Norge completed the first verified flight across the North Pole, crossing from Europe to Alaska.
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.
TaildraggerHow a band of American test pilots raced across defeated Germany to seize Hitler's secret jets before the Soviets could claim them.
TaildraggerHow a secret civilian racer from Wichita humiliated every military fighter at the 1929 Cleveland Air Races and changed American aviation.
TaildraggerThe 1926 Byrd-Bennett North Pole flight remains aviation's most debated claim - here's what happened and why historians still argue.
TaildraggerTen ambitious aircraft programs that were cancelled before production, from nuclear-powered bombers to forward-swept wing fighters.
TowerDozens of WWII Navy trainers rest on Lake Michigan's bottom, and the remarkable recoveries are producing airworthy warbirds decades later.
TaildraggerThe Maverick Act would transfer three F-14D Tomcats to Huntsville, Alabama, with at least one potentially restored to flying condition.
TowerIn 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.
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.
TaildraggerDouglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan flew from New York to Dublin in 1938, claiming he meant to go to California - and never admitted otherwise.
TaildraggerIn 1959, Marine pilot William Rankin ejected at 47,000 feet and survived 40 minutes inside a thunderstorm.
TaildraggerThe Boeing 777 marks 30 years as the best-selling long-haul widebody in commercial aviation history, with over 2,000 deliveries.
TowerCaptain 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.
TaildraggerThe story of Just Jane, the Avro Lancaster that two Lincolnshire brothers spent decades restoring to honor their brother lost over Nuremberg in 1944.
TaildraggerOn May 3, 1923, Lieutenants Oakley Kelly and John Macready completed the first nonstop transcontinental flight across the United States.
TaildraggerHow Saburo Sakai flew nearly five hours home with a bullet in his skull after being shot over Guadalcanal in 1942.
TaildraggerOn April 30, 1924, the Douglas World Cruiser Seattle crashed into an Alaskan mountainside, nearly ending the first-ever flight around the world.
TaildraggerFive Canadian airports dating back to the 1920s are still operating today, from Winnipeg's 1920 grass strip to Vancouver International.
TowerThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was WWII's heaviest single-engine fighter, devastating in both air combat and ground attack roles.
TaildraggerCalifornia's five oldest airports still operating in 2026 span from 1923 to 1930, each with deep roots in American aviation history.
TowerDouglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 crash, then became one of the RAF's greatest fighter aces in World War II.
TaildraggerHow a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 crashed in a Russian forest in 1943 was recovered six decades later and restored to flying condition.
TaildraggerA crewless B-17 Flying Fortress landed itself in a Belgian field in 1944 after all nine crew members bailed out.
TaildraggerThe Boeing 2707 was America's audacious supersonic airliner program, killed by Congress in 1971 after a billion dollars and zero flying prototypes.
TowerWiley Post lost an eye in an oilfield accident, bought his first airplane with the insurance money, and changed aviation forever.
TaildraggerOn April 28, 1919, Leslie Irvin made the first intentional free-fall parachute jump, proving humans stay conscious in free fall.
TaildraggerBoeing's Sonic Cruiser promised near-sonic speed but was shelved after 9/11 - its technology became the 787 Dreamliner.
TowerHow pilot Gail Halvorsen's unauthorized candy drops over Berlin transformed Cold War relations and became aviation's greatest humanitarian story.
TaildraggerHow 16 P-38 Lightnings flew 435 miles at wave-top height to intercept and kill Admiral Yamamoto in April 1943.
TaildraggerThe 1910 Los Angeles Air Meet at Dominguez Field drew half a million spectators and ignited America's love affair with flight.
TaildraggerJackie Cochran rose from barefoot orphan to the fastest woman alive, breaking the sound barrier and holding over 200 flight records.
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.
TaildraggerHow Tom Reilly spent two decades restoring the world's only flyable XP-82 Twin Mustang from a rusted hulk in an Ohio field.
TaildraggerOn April 26, 1937, the Condor Legion bombed the Basque town of Guernica in a three-hour attack that changed aerial warfare forever.
TaildraggerThe first production MQ-25 Stingray completed its maiden flight on April 25, 2026, marking a milestone in unmanned carrier-based tanker aviation.
TowerEugene Bullard, born in Georgia in 1895, became the first Black combat pilot in history, flying for France because America refused him.
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.
TaildraggerIn 1958-59, Bob Timm and John Cook kept a stock Cessna 172 airborne for 64 days, setting a record that still stands.
TaildraggerJimmy Angel crashed his Flamingo monoplane atop Venezuela's Auyán-tepui in 1937, proving the world's tallest waterfall existed.
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.
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.
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.
TaildraggerRichard Bong scored 40 aerial victories in the Pacific, making him the highest-scoring American fighter ace in history.
TaildraggerThe story of Whiskey Seven, a D-Day C-47 restored by volunteers and flown back to Normandy 70 and 75 years later.
TaildraggerHow four open-cockpit biplanes attempted the first flight around the world in 1924, and why Alaska nearly ended it all.
TaildraggerThe National Warplane Museum airshow in Geneseo, New York, delivers an intimate warbird experience on grass that larger shows can't match.
RampThomas 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.
TaildraggerFive military aircraft have served for over 60 years each, and the engineering principles behind their longevity apply to all of aviation.
TowerThe B-24 Lady Be Good vanished over the Sahara in 1943 and was found intact sixteen years later, four hundred miles past its base.
TaildraggerRoscoe Turner won three Thompson Trophies, flew with a lion cub, and became the greatest air racing pilot of the 1930s.
TaildraggerThe 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.
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.
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.
TaildraggerHow Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, with two broken ribs and a nine-inch piece of broom handle.
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.
TaildraggerBob Hoover, called the greatest stick-and-rudder pilot ever by Jimmy Doolittle, redefined airmanship through six decades of flying.
TaildraggerHow five Texas pilots who bought a forgotten P-51 Mustang in 1957 launched the warbird preservation movement that saved thousands of WWII aircraft.
TaildraggerThe decades-long quest to return the de Havilland Mosquito to flight demanded lost woodworking skills, wartime materials, and extraordinary determination.
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 1949 Easter Parade delivered nearly 13,000 tons of supplies to blockaded Berlin in 24 hours, breaking Soviet resolve.
TaildraggerAfter Pearl Harbor, Pan Am's Pacific Clipper flew 31,500 miles around the world because its Pacific route home no longer existed.
TaildraggerThe Fokker Trimotor bridged barnstorming and commercial aviation, shaping bush flying and aircraft design after a fatal 1931 crash.
TowerDouglas Corrigan flew a beat-up Curtiss Robin from New York to Ireland in 1938, claiming he read his compass wrong.
TaildraggerBob Hoover escaped a Nazi POW camp, stole a Focke-Wulf 190, and became the greatest demonstration pilot in aviation history.
TaildraggerOn April 17, 1964, Jerrie Mock became the first woman to fly solo around the world in a Cessna 180 named Spirit of Columbus.
TaildraggerThe true story of an F-106 Delta Dart that recovered from a flat spin and landed itself in a Montana cornfield in 1970.
TaildraggerThe Grumman F6F Hellcat achieved a 19-to-1 kill ratio and destroyed Japanese naval aviation at the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
TaildraggerBob Hoover's dead-stick Shrike Commander routine defined airshow flying for 40 years and remains the gold standard for energy management.
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.
RampThe 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.
TaildraggerIn 1986, Burt Rutan's homebuilt Voyager completed the first nonstop, unrefueled flight around the world in nine days.
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.
TaildraggerAmelia Earhart was a skilled, courageous pilot whose real legacy is her flying, not her disappearance.
TaildraggerThe Women Airforce Service Pilots flew 77 military aircraft types in WWII, yet waited 33 years for veterans' status.
TaildraggerBob Hoover's extraordinary career spanned a WWII prison escape, test flying, and airshow performances that redefined precision aerobatics.
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.
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