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.
John Alcock and Arthur Brown flew nonstop across the Atlantic in 1919, eight years before Lindbergh, in an open cockpit with primitive instruments.
Don Sheldon pioneered high-altitude glacier landings on Denali that transformed mountaineering expeditions and made survival rescues possible where no pilot had gone before.
Eddie Rickenbacker earned 26 aerial victories in WWI then survived 24 days adrift in the Pacific - the defining story of the Ace of Aces.
How Pan Am's China Clipper and pilot Edwin Musick opened the Pacific to commercial aviation starting November 22, 1935.
The first flight around the world was completed on September 28, 1924, by three U.S. Army Air Service crews in Douglas World Cruisers - 26,345 miles in 175 days.
How the Gates Flying Circus barnstormed America with war-surplus biplanes in the 1920s, turning curious farmers into the next generation of pilots.
The Grumman F6F Hellcat reversed American fortunes in the Pacific, earning a 19-to-1 kill ratio and destroying Japan's carrier air arm.
The Memphis Belle completed Europe's first publicly recognized 25-mission bomber tour in May 1943; a 14-year restoration at Wright-Patterson unveiled her in 2018.
How a single crashed Zero fighter recovered from Alaskan tundra in 1942 revealed the vulnerabilities that reversed American fortunes in the Pacific air war.
The Vought F4U Corsair was too fast and too difficult for carrier operations - so the Navy gave it to the Marines, who turned it into one of the most effective fighters of World War II.
Wiley Post flew around the world twice, discovered the jet stream, and built the first pressure suit - all with one eye and no high school diploma.
In July 1938, Douglas Corrigan flew from Brooklyn to Dublin in a leaking, fuel-soaked Curtiss Robin - then claimed he misread his compass.
On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 to Mach 1.06 over the Mojave Desert - with two broken ribs and a sawed-off broomstick in his pocket.
How a retired Army captain's unconventional tactics turned 112 volunteer pilots and shark-mouthed P-40 Warhawks into the most effective fighter unit in Asia.
Harold Gillam flew Alaska's most brutal conditions for fifteen years before a January 1943 crash in the coastal mountains claimed the territory's most storied bush pilot.
Gregory 'Pappy' Boyington led VMF-214, a squadron assembled from castoffs, to 97 aerial victories in 84 days - and was shot down over Rabaul before learning he'd earned the Medal of Honor.
Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times between 1934 and 1939, setting a record no pilot ever broke - in an era that was simply too dangerous to last.
The de Havilland Mosquito was a WWII British bomber built from birch plywood that outran Luftwaffe fighters - a private venture the Air Ministry initially rejected.
Slow, underpowered, and nearly obsolete, the SBD Dauntless sank three Japanese fleet carriers in five minutes at Midway on June 4, 1942.
On July 23, 1983, a metric conversion error drained Air Canada Flight 143 of fuel at 41,000 feet - and a glider pilot's instincts saved all 69 people aboard.