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 - the Alaska bush pilot no crash could kill - died in January 1943 trying to walk to help after putting his passengers down on a frozen mountain.
On April 16, 1912, Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly the English Channel - a feat buried by the Titanic disaster that same week.
On September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle flew a complete circuit under a canvas hood at Mitchel Field - the first fully blind flight, and the foundation of every IFR approach flown since.
On September 2, 1944, a 20-year-old Navy pilot named George H.W. Bush completed his bomb run over Chichi Jima with his engine on fire, bailed out, and floated four hours before a submarine rescued him.
Phoebe Omlie became the first woman to hold a U.S. federal transport pilot's license in 1929, starting as a barnstorming wing-walker before shaping national aviation policy.
On June 4, 1942, Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers the Navy had already written off sank three Japanese fleet carriers in six minutes and turned the Pacific War.
The barrel-shaped Gee Bee Model R-One hit 252 mph to win the 1932 Thompson Trophy - and killed nearly every pilot who flew it after Doolittle walked away.
The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the heaviest single-engine fighter of WWII - and its near-indestructibility made it one of the most effective combat aircraft ever built.
Bessie Coleman became the world's first Black female licensed pilot in 1921 after sailing to France when every American flight school refused her application.
Bob Hoover escaped a German POW camp by stealing a Focke-Wulf 190 and became the aviator that Neil Armstrong, Chuck Yeager, and Jimmy Doolittle each called the greatest they had ever seen.
In 1911, Cal Rodgers crossed the United States in 84 days on just 60 hours of flight experience, becoming the first pilot to fly coast to coast.
Don Sheldon pioneered the glacier landing techniques still used in Alaska today, flying ski planes into the Alaska Range professionally for thirty years from Talkeetna.
The 1983 Soviet shoot-down of KAL Flight 007 killed 269 people and directly led to President Reagan opening GPS to civilian aircraft worldwide.
On May 16, 1943, nineteen RAF Lancasters flew at 60 feet in darkness to breach Nazi Germany's Ruhr Valley dams in one of history's most precisely executed aerial missions.
Ormer Locklear invented wing-walking in 1919, became America's most famous aviator, and died on a Hollywood film set blinded by klieg lights during a night stunt.
On August 7, 1955, test pilot Tex Johnston barrel rolled Boeing's 707 prototype over Lake Washington - and sold the jet age.
How 300,000 volunteer hours over 13 years brought B-29 Doc back to the sky over Wichita in 2016 - one of only two flying Superfortresses left on Earth.
The 1934 MacRobertson Air Race flew 11,300 miles from England to Australia in under three days, reshaping the future of long-haul commercial aviation.
The Memphis Belle - the first B-17 crew to complete 25 combat missions over occupied Europe - is now fully restored and on permanent display in Dayton, Ohio.
The P-51 Mustang became WWII's finest piston-engine fighter through bold engineering decisions, a revolutionary wing, and one test pilot's honest memo.