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 Lockheed Constellation revolutionized transatlantic travel with its pressurized cabin, 300+ mph cruise speed, and unmistakable triple-tail silhouette - and a design story that's as compelling as the aircraft itself.
How Wilfrid 'Wop' May survived being chased by the Red Baron in 1918 and went on to complete a life-saving mercy flight through the Canadian wilderness in 1929.
On October 14, 1943, the Eighth Air Force launched 291 B-17s against Schweinfurt's ball bearing factories and lost 60 aircraft and 600 men in a single day.
On July 21, 1921, Army Air Service bombers sank the German battleship Ostfriesland in 21 minutes, validating Billy Mitchell's controversial claim that airpower had made the battleship obsolete.
Before crossing the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh spent years as a barnstormer, building the real-world skills that made his historic 1927 flight possible.
The 1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision killed 128 people and directly triggered the creation of the Federal Aviation Administration - reshaping every clearance, squawk code, and radar handoff in use today.
On May 24, 1988, TACA Flight 110's crew deadsticked a powerless Boeing 737 onto a Louisiana levee, saving all 45 people aboard.
The Douglas DC-3 transformed commercial aviation in 1936 and went on to serve in WWII, the Berlin Airlift, and Vietnam - with hundreds still flying today.
On April 6, 1924, four U.S. Army biplanes departed Seattle to attempt the first aerial circumnavigation of Earth - 26,000 miles with no radio nav, no weather radar, and no margin for error.
The North American XB-70 Valkyrie was America's most technically advanced Cold War bomber - capable of Mach 3 at 70,000 feet but cancelled before entering service.
Ormer Locklear climbed out of a moving Curtiss Jenny in 1917 to fix a loose radiator cap - and accidentally invented American barnstorming.
The SR-71 Blackbird flew over 3,500 Cold War missions at Mach 3.2 and was never once shot down - here's the full story of how it was built and why it worked.
Lincoln Beachey flew before 17 million Americans and was called the greatest aviator who ever lived by Orville Wright - before dying at age 28.
Glacier Girl is a P-38 Lightning recovered from 270 feet of Greenland ice in 1992 and restored to flying condition, taking to the sky again in 2002.
In 1924, eight U.S. Army Air Service airmen became the first to circle the globe by air, crossing 26,000 miles in open-cockpit biplanes before Charles Lindbergh ever left the ground.
Charles Carpenter, an Illinois schoolteacher turned Army aviator, bolted six bazookas to a Piper Cub and hunted German tanks across France in 1944.
XH558 was the last airworthy Avro Vulcan, restored by volunteers and public donations after 14 years on the ground to fly again for eight seasons.
Beryl Markham flew solo from England to Nova Scotia in 1936 - east into the prevailing winds, at night - and wrote what Hemingway called the best prose he'd ever read.
Bob Reeve pioneered glacier runway operations in 1930s Alaska, turning tidal mud flats and remote ice fields into reliable supply routes for Wrangell Mountain mines.
On the night of May 16–17, 1943, 19 Lancaster bombers and 133 airmen executed Operation Chastise, breaching Nazi Germany's Ruhr valley dams with Barnes Wallis's revolutionary bouncing bomb.