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 Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the most-produced American fighter of WWII - a massive, armor-laden aircraft engineered to bring pilots home from the worst the Luftwaffe could deliver.
How Bob Reeve built Alaska's air supply network from a tidal mud flat and glacier landings, guided by one enduring rule: go home slow.
How one man's obsession with flying WWI-era aircraft kept the first generation of flight alive at Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in New York.
Flak Bait, the Martin B-26 Marauder that flew 202 WWII combat missions, remains the most battle-proven American aircraft of the war - and its Smithsonian restoration tells that story in aluminum.
On September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle completed the first fully blind flight at Mitchel Field, NY, proving instrument flying could make commercial aviation viable in all weather.
The Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew obsolete biplanes in silence over German lines - and became one of WWII's most effective and feared combat units.
Richard Bong shot down 40 Japanese aircraft over the Pacific - a record no American fighter pilot has matched in over 80 years - and died the same morning the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima.
The F4U Corsair compiled an 11-to-1 kill ratio over Japanese fighters despite being rejected for carrier ops - the full story of the bent-wing bird.
The Dornier Do 335 Pfeil was the fastest piston-engine fighter of World War Two, and the only surviving example is on display at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.
Wiley Post's 1933 solo flight around the world in under eight days remains one of aviation's most overlooked achievements - completed by a one-eyed Oklahoma roughneck who pioneered the autopilot, the pressure suit, and the jet stream.
Carl Ben Eielson pioneered Alaska's airmail routes and crossed the Arctic Ocean before dying in a 1929 mercy mission over Siberia at age 32.
Eddie Rickenbacker survived WWI aerial combat, a catastrophic airline crash, and 24 days adrift in the Pacific - an unmatched record of resilience in aviation history.
Hurricane R4118 flew 49 combat sorties in 1940, vanished to India for decades, and was restored to flight in 2004 as one of warbird aviation's most documented recoveries.
On June 14, 1919, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight - eight years before Lindbergh, in a converted bomber with failed instruments.
How R.J. Mitchell's decade of Schneider Trophy racing produced the design language that made the Spitfire Britain's defining fighter of World War II.
The Gee Bee R-1 won the 1932 Thompson Trophy at 252.6 mph - and its story reveals how civilian air racing built the foundation for WWII combat aviation.
The 332nd Fighter Group flew over 15,000 combat sorties in WWII, built an exceptional bomber escort record, and dismantled the official Army doctrine that said Black men were unfit to fly.
In July 1938, Douglas Corrigan flew from Brooklyn to Dublin in a plane denied transatlantic clearance and spent 57 years insisting it was an accident.
How a fire-scorched B-29 abandoned at China Lake became one of two airworthy Superfortresses after a 16-year, 300,000-hour volunteer restoration in Wichita.
Ivan Gates turned barnstorming into a scalable business empire that put over a quarter million Americans in airplanes - more than any government program of the era.