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.
Harold Gillam saved five lives crash-landing his ice-crippled Pilgrim 100B on Porcher Island in January 1943 - then died alone trying to bring them rescue.
On September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle completed the first fully blind flight at Mitchel Field, establishing the foundation of instrument flight still practiced today.
On January 2, 1967, Colonel Robin Olds led 48 F-4 Phantoms disguised as F-105 strike aircraft into an ambush that downed 7 MiG-21s without a single American loss.
Ormer Locklear invented wing-walking in 1917, defined the barnstorming era, and died at 28 during a Hollywood night shoot - leaving a vocabulary every airshow performer still borrows from.
Pancho Barnes set the women's airspeed record in 1930 and built the Happy Bottom Riding Club, where Chuck Yeager came the night he broke the sound barrier.
Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times and became one of 1930s America's most recognized figures - flying cross-country with a full-grown African lion named Gilmore.
Spitfire MH434 is one of the last airworthy WWII fighters with a complete, unbroken combat record, still flying from Duxford under the Old Flying Machine Company.
On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 - with two broken ribs, a broomstick latch, and a classified flight the world wouldn't hear about for eight more months.
The Grumman F6F Hellcat, engineered from captured Zero intelligence, achieved a 19:1 kill ratio and ended Japanese carrier aviation in a single afternoon in June 1944.
Britain's CAM ships launched rocket-catapulted Hurricanes from merchant vessel bows with no recovery runway - WWII's most desperate and effective mid-Atlantic air defense solution.
The Lockheed Constellation was a revolutionary pressurized airliner that redefined transatlantic travel from 1946 until the jet age made it obsolete overnight.
On November 22, 1935, Pan American's China Clipper completed the first commercial transpacific airmail flight, reaching Manila in 59 hours and 48 minutes of flight time over seven days.
Wiley Post's 1930s stratospheric research produced the first practical pressure suit and the first cockpit documentation of the jet stream - foundations of modern high-altitude flight.
Flak Bait, a WWII B-26 Marauder with 207 combat missions and over 1,000 patched holes, is being carefully restored by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
In August 1944, 168 Allied airmen including P-38 pilot Joe Moser were sent to Buchenwald concentration camp - and a smuggled note got 156 of them out.
Eight years before Lindbergh, John Alcock and Arthur Brown completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight on June 14–15, 1919.
Major Richard Bong's 40 confirmed aerial victories in WWII remain the all-time American record - a story of extraordinary skill, quiet character, and tragic timing.
On August 1, 1943, 178 American B-24s flew one of the costliest missions in bomber history, earning five Medals of Honor in a single afternoon over Romania.
The de Havilland Mosquito was an unarmed wooden bomber that outran every Luftwaffe fighter and became the most versatile British warplane of World War II.
In 1924, two U.S. Army biplanes became the first aircraft to fly around the world - completing 27,553 miles in 175 days with open cockpits and minimal instruments.