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.
Wiley Post, a one-eyed Oklahoma oilfield worker, flew solo around the world in 1933 and pioneered pressure suit technology that became the foundation for modern spacesuits.
Beryl Markham made the first solo east-to-west Atlantic crossing in 1936, flying 21 hours against the prevailing winds in a single-engine Percival Vega Gull.
How Bob Reeve arrived in Depression-era Alaska with $75 and invented commercial glacier flying on the tidal flats of Valdez.
On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 with two broken ribs and a broom handle - the complete story of how it happened.
How Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew 26,366 miles around the Earth without landing or refueling - nine days in a cockpit two feet wide.
Doc, one of only two flyable B-29 Superfortresses in the world, flew again in 2016 after sitting in the Mojave Desert for decades - restored by volunteers in Wichita over nearly 30 years.
On September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle completed the first fully instrument-guided flight under a canvas hood at Mitchel Field, proving blind flight could be a system, not a stunt.
On the night of May 16–17, 1943, 617 Squadron's Lancaster bombers flew at 60 feet to breach the Ruhr Valley's dams using Barnes Wallis's revolutionary bouncing bomb.
How a single German navigation error on August 24, 1940 triggered the chain of decisions that redirected the Luftwaffe away from the RAF's airfields - and saved Britain.
The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the most produced American fighter of World War II - a massive, punishment-absorbing machine that brought pilots home when nothing else could.
The Tuskegee Airmen's 332nd Fighter Group flew over 200 WWII bomber escort missions with an exceptionally low loss rate - a record earned through discipline, not circumstance.
After WWI, the U.S. Army auctioned thousands of surplus Curtiss JN-4 Jennies for as little as $200, launching the barnstorming era that brought flight to rural America.
Rejected by the Navy and handed to the Marines, the Vought F4U Corsair became the Pacific War's most feared fighter with an 11-to-1 kill ratio.
On August 25, 1919, a passenger boarded a converted WWI bomber at Hounslow Heath and flew to Paris, launching scheduled international commercial aviation.
Bessie Coleman became the world's first Black woman to earn an internationally recognized pilot's license in 1921 after every American flight school refused to train her.
Bob Hoover escaped a German POW camp in 1945 by stealing a Focke-Wulf 190 he had never flown, launching the career of aviation's greatest airshow pilot.
Frank Luke Jr. became America's most lethal WWI ace by destroying 14 observation balloons and 4 aircraft in just 17 days during September 1918.
The complete story of Glacier Girl - the P-38 Lightning buried 268 feet under the Greenland ice cap in 1942 and restored to flight in 2002.
Katherine Stinson set cross-country distance records, performed night aerobatics with Roman candles, barnstormed Japan and China, and was still rejected by the Army in WWI.
On September 28, 1924, two U.S. Army Air Service biplanes completed the first aerial circumnavigation of the Earth - 27,553 miles in 175 days.