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.
In 1929, a secretive civilian monoplane from Wichita won the first Thompson Trophy Race, outrunning U.S. military fighters and accelerating the end of the biplane era.
In January 1929, pilots Wop May and Vic Horner flew diphtheria antitoxin to Fort Vermilion, Alberta at 40 below zero, proving the airplane was essential northern infrastructure.
Bob Reeve pioneered glacier landings in 1930s Alaska through methodical self-taught technique, reshaping bush flying and founding an airline that lasted half a century.
On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager became the first person to fly faster than sound, piloting the Bell X-1 over the Mojave Desert with two broken ribs.
In December 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew the Voyager nonstop and unrefueled around the world in 9 days - a record no comparable aircraft has broken since.
Doc, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress built in Wichita in 1944, returned to flight on July 17, 2016 after a 16-year volunteer restoration - one of only two airworthy B-29s in the world.
On August 7, 1955, Boeing chief test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled the prototype 707 twice over Lake Washington - a calculated act that helped sell the jet age to American airlines.
The Gee Bee R-1 Super Sportster won the 1932 Thompson Trophy at 252 mph - the fastest and most dangerous racing airplane of its era.
The Memphis Belle B-17F Flying Fortress - the first American bomber crew to complete 25 combat missions over Europe - is fully restored and on display in Dayton, Ohio.
The Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment - the 'Night Witches' - flew 23,000 combat sorties against Germany in open-cockpit biplanes, becoming one of WWII's most feared air units.
The Vought F4U Corsair was rejected for carrier duty in 1943, adopted by Marines, and became one of WWII's most feared fighters with 2,100+ aerial victories.
Art Scholl was the best aerobatic pilot of his generation - his death filming Top Gun on September 16, 1985 left four quiet words in the credits.
Bessie Coleman became the world's first Black woman to earn an international aviator's license in 1921 - after every American flight school refused her because of her race.
On October 4–5, 1931, Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon Jr. made the first nonstop transpacific flight - 4,500 miles in 41 hours - after deliberately jettisoning their landing gear over the Pacific.
Don Sheldon of Talkeetna Air Service pioneered glacier flying in the Alaska Range, completing an estimated 5,000 glacier landings that opened Denali to modern mountaineering.
On July 14, 1938, Howard Hughes landed at Floyd Bennett Field after circling the globe in 3 days and 19 hours, nearly halving the standing world record.
On the night of May 16, 1943, nineteen Lancaster bombers used a spinning cylindrical mine and improvised precision tools to breach the industrial heart of Nazi Germany.
On August 1, 1943, 178 B-24 Liberators attacked Nazi oil refineries at Ploesti - the single most decorated combat action in American aviation history.
Phoebe Fairgrave Omlie went from teenage wing walker to the first woman in a senior U.S. federal aviation post, building infrastructure that shaped American aviation for generations.
On January 2, 1967, Colonel Robin Olds disguised his F-4 Phantoms as strike aircraft and handed North Vietnam its worst single day in the air.