Bessie Coleman became the first Black American and first American woman of color to earn a pilot's license in 1921, crossing the Atlantic after every U.S. flight school turned her away.
TaildraggerBob Hoover escaped a WWII POW camp by stealing a Focke-Wulf 190 he had never flown - the beginning of the greatest airshow career in aviation history.
TaildraggerHow Bob Reeve turned tidal mudflats into a runway in 1932 and pioneered glacier landing techniques that defined Alaska backcountry aviation for generations.
TaildraggerFlak-Bait flew 207 combat missions over occupied Europe - more than any other American aircraft in WWII - and the Smithsonian's conservation choice is what makes it irreplaceable.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear became the world's first professional wing walker in 1919, died filming a Hollywood night sequence in 1920, and helped plant the seed for American aviation as we know it.
TaildraggerThe B-24 Liberator was WWII's most-produced American warplane, and the Strawberry Bitch at Wright-Patterson is the last surviving B-24D combat veteran.
TaildraggerOn July 23, 1983, a unit conversion error left Air Canada Flight 143 with less than half its required fuel - and both engines silent at 41,000 feet over Canada.
TaildraggerThe Hawker Hurricane, not the Spitfire, shot down more than 55% of Luftwaffe aircraft destroyed over Britain in 1940 - and its most effective squadron was Polish.
TaildraggerThe Me 262 was the world's first operational jet fighter - and Hitler's decision to redesign it as a bomber may have cost Germany air superiority.
TaildraggerOn October 5, 1930, Britain's flagship airship R101 crashed into a French hillside, killing 48 and ending the nation's entire airship programme overnight.
TaildraggerThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the most-produced American fighter of WWII, armed with eight .50-caliber guns and built to bring pilots home from missions other aircraft couldn't survive.
TaildraggerThe Schneider Trophy seaplane races (1913–1931) produced the specific engineering breakthroughs in airframes and engines that directly created the Spitfire and Rolls-Royce Merlin.
TaildraggerWiley Post's 1933 solo circumnavigation in the Winnie Mae didn't just break records - it stumbled onto the jet stream and changed how every pilot flies today.
TaildraggerCarl Ben Eielson pioneered Alaska airmail and crossed the Arctic Ocean in 1928 - then vanished over the Bering Sea on November 9, 1929, at age 32.
TaildraggerDick Rutan and Jeana Yeager completed the first nonstop, unrefueled circumnavigation of Earth in December 1986, landing with just 18 gallons of fuel to spare.
TaildraggerFrank Luke destroyed 18 enemy targets in 18 days of WWI combat, becoming America's most ferocious ace and earning the Medal of Honor before dying at 21.
TaildraggerLincoln Beachey was the greatest aviator of the pre-WWI era - a San Francisco daredevil who flew maneuvers no one else survived, before his death at 28 in 1915.
TaildraggerThe Dornier Do 335 Pfeil reached 474 mph on piston power alone - the fastest of its kind - and the only complete airframe survives at Udvar-Hazy.
TaildraggerHow the Air Transport Command flew 650,000 tons of supplies over the Himalayas between 1942 and 1945, and why those missions still shape military aviation today.
TaildraggerThe 1934 MacRobertson Air Race proved a commercial airliner could nearly match purpose-built racers - and reshaped the future of flight.
Taildragger