Roscoe Turner and Gilmore the Lion - The Racing Pilot Who Flew With a Cat in the Cockpit
How showman-pilot Roscoe Turner flew with a pet lion named Gilmore and became the only man to win the Thompson Trophy three times.
The Hangar
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 Bent-Wing Bird - How the Vought F4U Corsair Earned the Name Whistling Death
How the Vought F4U Corsair's bent inverted gull wing solved an engineering problem and earned it the fearsome name Whistling Death.
The Douglas DC-3 and the Gooney Bird That Outlived Every Airplane Built to Replace It
The Douglas DC-3 first flew in 1935, made airlines profitable, helped win WWII as the C-47, and still flies today.
The Night Witches - How the Soviet 588th Flew Canvas Biplanes to War in the Dark
How the Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment - the 'Night Witches' - flew obsolete canvas biplanes on 23,000+ night raids in WWII.
The Wooden Wonder Reborn - How Glyn Powell's Molds and the Avspecs Team Brought the de Havilland Mosquito Back to the Sky
How Glyn Powell's hand-built molds and New Zealand's Avspecs team returned the de Havilland Mosquito to flight after 16 years grounded.
Wrong Way Corrigan and the Flight to Ireland He Swore He Never Meant to Make
How Douglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan flew a patched-up Curtiss Robin from New York to Ireland in 1938 and blamed his compass.
Beryl Markham and the Night Atlantic: The Solo Flight That Went the Hard Way
Beryl Markham was the first person to fly solo nonstop from England to North America on September 4, 1936, battling headwinds alone for 21 hours and 25 minutes.
Doc the B-Twenty-Nine Superfortress: From the Mojave Desert to the Kansas Sky
Doc the B-29 Superfortress spent 42 years abandoned in the Mojave Desert before volunteers returned her to the Kansas skies where she was born.
Glenn Curtiss, the Gordon Bennett Trophy, and the Patent War That Nearly Grounded American Aviation
Glenn Curtiss won history's first international air speed race in 1909, invented naval aviation, and built the trainer that gave WWI pilots their wings - all while fighting the patent war that nearly grounded American aviation.
Lincoln Beachey and the Death Dip: The Man Who Taught America to Look Up
Lincoln Beachey was America's greatest early aviator, whose death-defying stunts from 1910 to 1915 transformed the airplane from curiosity to cultural icon.
Operation Tidal Wave: The Low-Level Mission to Ploesti and the Five Medals of Honor
Operation Tidal Wave on August 1, 1943 sent 178 B-24 Liberators against Romania's Ploesti oil refineries at treetop level, producing five Medals of Honor in a single mission.
Punch Dickins and the Barren Lands: Opening the Canadian North by Air
In 1928, bush pilot Punch Dickins flew a 3,900-mile survey of Canada's unmapped Barren Lands, earning the McKee Trophy and opening the Northwest Territories to regular air service.
Roscoe Turner, the Thompson Trophy, and the Man Who Turned Air Racing Into Theater
Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times - the only pilot in history to do so - combining elite flying skill with deliberate, strategic self-promotion during aviation's golden age.
The Night Witches: Soviet Women Who Bombed the Wehrmacht in Open-Cockpit Biplanes
The all-female 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew over 23,000 combat sorties in WWI-era Po-2 biplanes, earning the German nickname 'Night Witches.'
The Question Mark: Six Days Over Los Angeles and the Endurance Flight That Proved Airpower Could Stay Up Forever
How a 1929 six-day endurance flight over Los Angeles proved aerial refueling was operationally viable and laid the strategic foundation for American airpower in World War II.
The Solar Challenger and the English Channel: July Seven, Nineteen Eighty-One
On July 7, 1981, pilot Steve Ptacek flew the Solar Challenger from France to England in 5 hours 23 minutes on nothing but sunlight - no fuel, no batteries, no stored energy of any kind.
The Swamp Ghost: The B-Seventeen That Slept in a Papua New Guinea Swamp for Sixty-Four Years
The Swamp Ghost is a B-17E bomber that crash-landed in a Papua New Guinea swamp in 1942 and sat preserved and largely intact for 64 years before recovery.
The Vought F4U Corsair: The Bent-Wing Bird the Carriers Didn't Want
The Vought F4U Corsair overcame early carrier rejection to achieve an 11-to-1 kill ratio in the Pacific and serve through the Korean War, with over 12,600 built across eleven years.
Bessie Coleman and the License Nobody in America Would Give Her
Bessie Coleman became the world's first Black female pilot in 1921 after every American flight school turned her away - so she crossed the Atlantic to earn her license in France.
Bob Hoover and the FW 190 He Stole: The Greatest Aviator Jimmy Doolittle Ever Saw
Bob Hoover stole a Focke-Wulf 190 from a Luftwaffe airfield to escape a German POW camp - then became the greatest airshow pilot who ever lived.