How an 18-year grassroots restoration brought Doc, a 1944 B-29 Superfortress, from a desert weapons range back to airworthy flight over Wichita.
TaildraggerDon Sheldon pioneered routine glacier landings in the Alaska Range, completing 500+ rescues and supply missions into terrain that stopped other pilots cold.
TaildraggerFrank Luke recorded 18 aerial victories in 17 days in September 1918, becoming America's deadliest balloon buster and the AEF's second-highest scoring ace.
TaildraggerOn the night of May 16, 1943, 19 Lancaster bombers flew at 60 feet over black water to deliver a weapon nobody believed could exist.
TaildraggerRoscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times - in 1933, 1934, and 1938 - a record no pilot before or since has matched in American air racing history.
TaildraggerThe Lockheed P-38 Lightning redefined American air power in WWII - from an impossible design brief to the mission that killed the architect of Pearl Harbor.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle B-17F completed 25 combat missions over occupied Europe in 1943 with all ten crew members surviving, then spent decades deteriorating outdoors before a 13-year restoration brought her to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
TaildraggerOn July 18, 1938, Douglas Corrigan landed in Ireland claiming he'd followed the wrong end of his compass - a story no one believed and everyone loved.
TaildraggerIn 1911, Cal Rodgers flew a grape-soda-sponsored Wright biplane from Brooklyn to Long Beach in 84 days, becoming the first pilot to cross the United States by air.
TaildraggerCarl Ben Eielson pioneered commercial aviation in Alaska before disappearing over the Bering Sea on November 9, 1929, sparking one of aviation history's most dangerous search operations.
TaildraggerBefore Pearl Harbor, roughly 100 American pilots were already flying combat against Japan under Claire Chennault - the story of the Flying Tigers and how tactics beat technology.
TaildraggerHow barnstormer Clyde Pangborn's years hanging off biplanes above county fairs gave him the skills to complete the first non-stop transpacific flight in 1931.
TaildraggerThe 1961 crash of UN-chartered DC-6B Albertina, which killed Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld near Ndola, remains officially unexplained 65 years later.
TaildraggerOn September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle flew the first fully instrument-guided flight in history - the 15-minute test that made modern IFR flying possible.
TaildraggerOn August 7, 1942, Japanese ace Saburo Sakai flew 560 miles home over open ocean with a fractured skull and a destroyed right eye - a story of survival that defines human limits in the cockpit.
TaildraggerIn August 1955, Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled the 367-80 prototype over Lake Washington in a move that helped seal the jet age for Boeing.
TaildraggerHow a downed Japanese Zero fighter recovered from an Alaskan bog in 1942 gave the U.S. Navy the intelligence it needed to turn the tide of the Pacific air war.
TaildraggerThe Curtiss SB2C Helldiver survived over 800 engineering changes and a reputation its own crews despised to deliver more combat ordnance than any other Allied carrier dive bomber in the Pacific.
TaildraggerOn September 4, 1932, Jimmy Doolittle flew the Gee Bee Model R to a 252.6 mph Thompson Trophy victory - then retired from racing on the spot.
TaildraggerThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt ended WWII as America's most-produced fighter, with the 56th Fighter Group destroying more enemy aircraft than any other group in the Eighth Air Force.
Taildragger