How 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.
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.
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.
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.
TaildraggerJacqueline Cochran rose from a shoeless Depression-era childhood to hold more aviation records than any pilot in history, male or female.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
TaildraggerIn January 1929, WWI ace Wop May flew 250 miles through subarctic Alberta to deliver diphtheria antitoxin and save children in isolated Fort Vermilion.
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.
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.
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.
TaildraggerIvan Gates never learned to fly, yet his Gates Flying Circus introduced an estimated one million Americans to flight and helped forge U.S. aviation culture in the 1920s.
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.
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.
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.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito was a twin-engine unarmed wooden bomber the Air Ministry rejected - then feared losing to its own speed.
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.
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