Bob Hoover - the pilot Chuck Yeager called the best he ever saw - escaped a German POW camp by stealing a Focke-Wulf 190 and went on to redefine what airmanship looks like.
TaildraggerIn 1911, Cal Rodgers flew a 35-horsepower biplane from Brooklyn to California in 49 days, proving a coast-to-coast crossing was possible despite 15 crashes and no navigation aids.
TaildraggerFlak Bait, the most combat-experienced American bomber in the European Theater, completed 202 missions and bears over 1,000 field-repair patches - now being fully restored by the Smithsonian.
TaildraggerPancho Barnes built the Happy Bottom Riding Club near Edwards AFB, creating the human infrastructure behind the golden age of American flight test.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito was a twin-engine wooden bomber rejected by the British Air Ministry in 1938 that became one of the most versatile and survivable aircraft of World War II.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle completed 25 combat missions over occupied Europe in 1943 and now stands fully restored at the National Museum of the USAF in Dayton.
TaildraggerThe Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew over 23,000 combat sorties in fabric biplanes against Nazi Germany, haunting the Eastern Front from 1942 to 1945.
TaildraggerHow fifteen years of Schneider Trophy seaplane racing - and the genius of R.J. Mitchell - directly produced the Supermarine Spitfire that defended Britain in 1940.
TaildraggerDick Rutan and Jeana Yeager completed the first nonstop, unrefueled circumnavigation of the globe in December 1986, flying 24,986 miles in nine days aboard the homebuilt Voyager.
TaildraggerDon Sheldon pioneered glacier landing techniques in the Alaska Range across three decades, and his methods remain the standard for high-mountain bush flying today.
TaildraggerOperation Vittles proved a blockaded city of 2.5 million could be sustained entirely by air - and produced one of aviation's most unlikely heroes.
TaildraggerRoscoe Turner's three Thompson Trophy wins remain unmatched after 80 years, making him the definitive figure of golden age American air racing.
TaildraggerThe Curtiss NC-4 completed the first transatlantic air crossing in May 1919 - eight years before Lindbergh and two before Alcock and Brown.
TaildraggerThe Douglas DC-3 made commercial aviation profitable for the first time in 1935, defined Allied air transport in WWII, and still flies revenue cargo routes on every inhabited continent today.
TaildraggerThe Focke-Wulf Fw 190 was Germany's finest piston fighter - how it shocked the RAF in 1941, how Britain accidentally captured one intact, and why fewer than a dozen fly today.
TaildraggerThe Granville Brothers built the fastest - and most dangerous - racing aircraft of the 1930s, winning the 1932 Thompson Trophy at 252 mph.
TaildraggerOn May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew 3,600 miles from New York to Paris alone in 33 hours - a crossing that permanently transformed aviation.
TaildraggerGlacier Girl is a WWII P-38 Lightning recovered from 268 feet of Greenland ice after 50 years and restored to flight, taking to the skies again in 2002.
TaildraggerHarold Gillam flew Alaska's deadliest routes in weather that grounded every other pilot - until a January 1943 crash in southeastern Alaska ended a legendary career.
TaildraggerOn September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle completed the first fully blind flight at Mitchel Field, NY, proving instrument flying was a reproducible skill - not a gamble.
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