The 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.
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.
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.
TaildraggerBob Hoover stole a Focke-Wulf 190 from a Luftwaffe airfield to escape a German POW camp - then became the greatest airshow pilot who ever lived.
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.
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.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear of Greenville, Texas invented airplane-to-airplane transfers and became barnstorming's first true showman before dying at 28 in 1920.
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.
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.
TaildraggerThe Dornier Do 335 Pfeil was the fastest piston-engined fighter of WWII, reaching ~475 mph - but only around 40 were ever built.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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