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.
The Memphis Belle B-17F completed 25 combat missions over occupied Europe in 1943 with all ten crew members surviving, then spent decades deteriorating outdoors before a 13-year restoration brought her to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
On July 18, 1938, Douglas Corrigan landed in Ireland claiming he'd followed the wrong end of his compass - a story no one believed and everyone loved.
In 1911, Cal Rodgers flew a grape-soda-sponsored Wright biplane from Brooklyn to Long Beach in 84 days, becoming the first pilot to cross the United States by air.
Carl Ben Eielson pioneered commercial aviation in Alaska before disappearing over the Bering Sea on November 9, 1929, sparking one of aviation history's most dangerous search operations.
Before Pearl Harbor, roughly 100 American pilots were already flying combat against Japan under Claire Chennault - the story of the Flying Tigers and how tactics beat technology.
How barnstormer Clyde Pangborn's years hanging off biplanes above county fairs gave him the skills to complete the first non-stop transpacific flight in 1931.
The 1961 crash of UN-chartered DC-6B Albertina, which killed Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld near Ndola, remains officially unexplained 65 years later.
On September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle flew the first fully instrument-guided flight in history - the 15-minute test that made modern IFR flying possible.
On August 7, 1942, Japanese ace Saburo Sakai flew 560 miles home over open ocean with a fractured skull and a destroyed right eye - a story of survival that defines human limits in the cockpit.
In August 1955, Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled the 367-80 prototype over Lake Washington in a move that helped seal the jet age for Boeing.
How a downed Japanese Zero fighter recovered from an Alaskan bog in 1942 gave the U.S. Navy the intelligence it needed to turn the tide of the Pacific air war.
The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver survived over 800 engineering changes and a reputation its own crews despised to deliver more combat ordnance than any other Allied carrier dive bomber in the Pacific.
On September 4, 1932, Jimmy Doolittle flew the Gee Bee Model R to a 252.6 mph Thompson Trophy victory - then retired from racing on the spot.
The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt ended WWII as America's most-produced fighter, with the 56th Fighter Group destroying more enemy aircraft than any other group in the Eighth Air Force.
The Vought F4U Corsair's inverted gull wing solved a critical propeller clearance problem - and gave the Marines their most iconic fighter of World War II.
Bessie Coleman became the world's first Black licensed pilot in 1921, crossing the Atlantic to earn credentials that every American flight school had refused her.
Bob Hoover survived being shot down over France, escaped a German POW camp in a stolen Focke-Wulf 190, and became the greatest airshow pilot in history.
Bockscar dropped the Nagasaki atomic bomb on August 9, 1945, with a broken fuel pump, a 45-minute detour, and fuel remaining for exactly one final bomb run.
On September 17, 1908, Lt. Thomas Selfridge became aviation's first powered-flight fatality - and his role in early aviation was far larger than most history books acknowledge.
How Barnes Wallis's precisely engineered bouncing bomb and 617 Squadron's low-level attack on Germany's Ruhr dams on May 16–17, 1943 redefined what airpower could accomplish.