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 Aichi M6A Seiran was a WWII Japanese floatplane designed to fold inside a submarine and strike American targets - the sole survivor hangs at the Udvar-Hazy Center.
The B-29 Doc sat abandoned in a California desert for four decades before a 16-year volunteer effort brought it back to flight over Wichita in 2016.
The 1954 de Havilland Comet disasters revealed how square window corners caused fatal metal fatigue, permanently transforming pressurized aircraft design worldwide.
The Douglas DC-3 was the first airliner to make commercial aviation profitable on passenger revenue alone - and it's still flying nearly 90 years later.
How a German pilot's navigational error in June 1942 handed Britain its most valuable aviation intelligence of the entire war.
On June 4, 1942, Lt. Cdr. Wade McClusky's decision to keep searching over empty Pacific waters led to a five-minute attack that sank three Japanese carriers and turned the tide of the war.
Bessie Coleman earned her pilot's license in 1921 after every American flight school refused her - so she crossed an ocean and trained in France instead.
Bob Hoover - escape artist, sound-barrier witness, and dead-stick virtuoso - remains the pilot by whom all other pilots are measured.
On October 24, 1944, Commander David McCampbell and one wingman intercepted 60 Japanese aircraft over the Philippine Sea, producing the most lethal single aerial mission in U.S. naval history.
Eight years before Lindbergh, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown crossed the Atlantic non-stop in an open-cockpit biplane - and most people have never heard their names.
On the night of May 16, 1943, RAF 617 Squadron flew at 60 feet above German reservoirs to deliver a spinning bomb that breached two dams and reshaped strategic bombing.
On August 7, 1942, Japanese ace Saburo Sakai flew 560 miles home from Guadalcanal alone - one eye destroyed, barely conscious, no radio.
How a 1919 government surplus sale of WWI training aircraft for as little as $200 each launched barnstorming and gave rural America its first taste of flight.
The Hughes H-4 Hercules flew just once in 1947, but its single minute over Long Beach Harbor silenced Senate critics and left an enduring mark on aviation engineering.
On November 22, 1935, Pan American's China Clipper completed the first transpacific airmail flight under Captain Edwin Musick, opening scheduled commercial service across the Pacific.
R.J. Mitchell designed the Spitfire's revolutionary elliptical wing before dying of cancer in 1937, never seeing his aircraft save Britain in 1940.
In December 1943, a Luftwaffe pilot chose mercy over victory over the North Sea - and the two men who lived it didn't find each other again for 46 years.
Doc the B-29 Superfortress returned to flight on July 17, 2016, after decades in the California desert - one of the most significant warbird restorations in American aviation history.
Douglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 crash, proved he could still fly to operational standards, was discharged on a technicality, then returned in WWII to lead RAF fighter squadrons.
Flak Bait, a Martin B-26 Marauder, flew 202 combat missions over occupied Europe - more than any other American aircraft in the entire European Theater.