Douglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 aerobatic crash at age 21, fought his way back into the RAF, and led Spitfire wings over occupied Europe during World War II.
TaildraggerOn July 17, 1938, Douglas Corrigan departed Brooklyn bound for Los Angeles and landed in Dublin, Ireland - the wrong-way Atlantic crossing nobody could prove was intentional.
TaildraggerOperation Chastise on May 16–17, 1943 sent nineteen Lancasters to breach the Ruhr dams using Barnes Wallis's revolutionary bouncing bomb and some of the most demanding low-level flying in aviation history.
TaildraggerThe B-29 'Doc' spent over 40 years abandoned at China Lake before volunteers flew her home to Wichita and restored her to flight in 2016.
TaildraggerThe Boeing 307 Stratoliner was aviation's first pressurized airliner - and its sole survivor had to sink in Elliott Bay before it could reach the Smithsonian.
TaildraggerThe Grumman F6F Hellcat achieved a 19-to-1 kill ratio in WWII and produced the top-scoring U.S. Navy ace in history, David McCampbell, who downed nine aircraft in a single sortie.
TaildraggerThe 1934 MacRobertson Air Race from England to Australia pitted purpose-built racers against a commercial airliner - and the result reshaped the future of aviation.
TaildraggerHow Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew the Rutan Voyager around the world nonstop in December 1986, landing with just 18 gallons to spare.
TaildraggerBob Reeve pioneered glacier landing techniques in 1930s Alaska using painted tire tracks and systematic risk assessment, eventually founding Reeve Aleutian Airways.
TaildraggerIn 1911, Cal Rodgers flew a grape-soda-sponsored biplane from Brooklyn to the Pacific in 84 days, surviving 15+ crashes to complete the first transcontinental flight in history.
TaildraggerBefore crossing the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh spent years as a barnstorming wing walker - the unforgiving apprenticeship that built the most famous pilot in history.
TaildraggerFrank Luke destroyed 18 enemy observation balloons and aircraft in 17 days of WWI combat, becoming America's deadliest and most feared pilot over the Western Front.
TaildraggerHurricane R4118 is the only Battle of Britain combat veteran still airworthy - found in a field in India after decades and restored to flight in 2004.
TaildraggerOn October 9, 1937, American aviator Jimmy Angel landed his Flamingo monoplane atop Venezuela's Auyán-tepui mesa - and couldn't get it back off for 33 years.
TaildraggerThe Bristol Beaufighter was WWII's radar-equipped night hunter - combining airborne interception technology with devastating firepower to change the mathematics of nocturnal air war.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito outran German fighters, flew on wood instead of aluminum, and became the most versatile combat aircraft of World War II.
TaildraggerThe Dornier Do 335 Pfeil was the fastest piston fighter of World War II, and the only complete example survives at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center.
TaildraggerThe Gee Bee Model R set a world speed record of 252 mph at the 1932 National Air Races - and claimed the lives of nearly everyone else who flew it at the limit.
TaildraggerThe Lockheed P-38 Lightning was the most distinctive American fighter of WWII - a twin-boomed, twin-engined design that dominated the Pacific and carried America's top ace to 40 kills.
TaildraggerThe Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew over 23,000 combat sorties in plywood biplanes against Nazi forces from 1941 to 1945, earning the name 'Night Witches.'
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