Beryl Markham and the Night Atlantic: The Solo Flight That Went the Hard Way
Beryl Markham was the first person to fly solo nonstop from England to North America on September 4, 1936, battling headwinds alone for 21 hours and 25 minutes.
The Hangar
Aviation history and storytelling with Taildragger. Warbird restorations, legendary pilots, famous flights, and the stories that shaped aviation from the Wright Brothers to the Space Shuttle.
Doc the B-Twenty-Nine Superfortress: From the Mojave Desert to the Kansas Sky
Doc the B-29 Superfortress spent 42 years abandoned in the Mojave Desert before volunteers returned her to the Kansas skies where she was born.
Glenn Curtiss, the Gordon Bennett Trophy, and the Patent War That Nearly Grounded American Aviation
Glenn Curtiss won history's first international air speed race in 1909, invented naval aviation, and built the trainer that gave WWI pilots their wings - all while fighting the patent war that nearly grounded American aviation.
Lincoln Beachey and the Death Dip: The Man Who Taught America to Look Up
Lincoln Beachey was America's greatest early aviator, whose death-defying stunts from 1910 to 1915 transformed the airplane from curiosity to cultural icon.
Operation Tidal Wave: The Low-Level Mission to Ploesti and the Five Medals of Honor
Operation Tidal Wave on August 1, 1943 sent 178 B-24 Liberators against Romania's Ploesti oil refineries at treetop level, producing five Medals of Honor in a single mission.
Punch Dickins and the Barren Lands: Opening the Canadian North by Air
In 1928, bush pilot Punch Dickins flew a 3,900-mile survey of Canada's unmapped Barren Lands, earning the McKee Trophy and opening the Northwest Territories to regular air service.
Roscoe Turner, the Thompson Trophy, and the Man Who Turned Air Racing Into Theater
Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times - the only pilot in history to do so - combining elite flying skill with deliberate, strategic self-promotion during aviation's golden age.
The Night Witches: Soviet Women Who Bombed the Wehrmacht in Open-Cockpit Biplanes
The all-female 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew over 23,000 combat sorties in WWI-era Po-2 biplanes, earning the German nickname 'Night Witches.'
The Question Mark: Six Days Over Los Angeles and the Endurance Flight That Proved Airpower Could Stay Up Forever
How a 1929 six-day endurance flight over Los Angeles proved aerial refueling was operationally viable and laid the strategic foundation for American airpower in World War II.
The Solar Challenger and the English Channel: July Seven, Nineteen Eighty-One
On July 7, 1981, pilot Steve Ptacek flew the Solar Challenger from France to England in 5 hours 23 minutes on nothing but sunlight - no fuel, no batteries, no stored energy of any kind.
The Swamp Ghost: The B-Seventeen That Slept in a Papua New Guinea Swamp for Sixty-Four Years
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.
The Vought F4U Corsair: The Bent-Wing Bird the Carriers Didn't Want
The 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.
Bessie Coleman and the License Nobody in America Would Give Her
Bessie 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.
Bob Hoover and the FW 190 He Stole: The Greatest Aviator Jimmy Doolittle Ever Saw
Bob 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.
Flak Bait: The Martin B-26 Marauder That Flew Two Hundred and Seven Missions
Flak 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.
Operation Chastise and the Sixty-Foot Run: The Night Barnes Wallis Sent the Dambusters to Breach the Ruhr
On 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.
Ormer Locklear and the Airplane Transfer: The Texan Who Built Barnstorming Into an Art Form
Ormer Locklear of Greenville, Texas invented airplane-to-airplane transfers and became barnstorming's first true showman before dying at 28 in 1920.
The China Clipper: Pan American's First Crossing of the Pacific
On 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.
The Dole Derby: The Race to Hawaii That Swallowed the Pacific
The 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.
The Dornier Do 335 Pfeil: The Fastest Piston Fighter Nobody Got to Fight
The Dornier Do 335 Pfeil was the fastest piston-engined fighter of WWII, reaching ~475 mph - but only around 40 were ever built.