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.
Bessie Coleman became the first Black American to earn an international pilot's license in 1921 after learning French and training in France when every American school refused her.
Bob Hoover escaped a German POW camp by stealing a Focke-Wulf 190, became the greatest airshow pilot of his generation, and fought the FAA to keep flying into his seventies.
Bob Reeve arrived in Valdez, Alaska in 1932 with $30 and built the most accomplished glacier flying operation of Alaska's golden age of bush aviation.
On April 18, 1943, sixteen P-38 Lightnings flew 400 miles over open ocean to ambush and kill Japan's most powerful admiral using a decoded schedule.
Ormer Locklear invented wingwalking by accident in 1918 and became Hollywood's first aerial stuntman before dying on camera before 100,000 witnesses.
On September 28, 1924, three U.S. Army biplanes completed the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe - three years before Lindbergh's solo Atlantic crossing.
The Aichi M6A1 Seiran was a WWII Japanese submarine-launched floatplane built to bomb the Panama Canal. The only survivor hangs at Udvar-Hazy.
On the night of October 13–14, 1942, Japanese battleships reduced Henderson Field to rubble - and nine Marine dive bomber crews flew anyway.
How Pan American's Martin M-130 flying boats and Captain Edwin Musick conquered 8,000 miles of open Pacific to launch the first scheduled transoceanic air service in 1935.
The 1927 Dole Air Race sent eight aircraft toward Hawaii for a $25,000 prize and cost ten lives when ambition outpaced training and airworthiness.
The Lockheed Constellation cut New York-to-Paris travel to 13 hours in 1946, redefining transatlantic flight through pressurization, range, and a design born from Howard Hughes's audacious 1939 spec.
The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt became WWII's most-produced American fighter - over 15,600 built - and the most survivable combat aircraft of the war.
On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager became the first person confirmed to fly faster than sound, reaching Mach 1.06 at 43,000 feet over the Mojave Desert.
Jacqueline Cochran was the most decorated aviator of the 20th century - over 200 records, the first woman to break the sound barrier, and architect of the WASP program.
In 1928, Punch Dickins flew 4,000 miles over Canada's unmapped Barren Lands in a single-engine Fokker with no radio, earning the McKee Trophy and opening the Arctic north to aviation.
On January 2, 1967, Colonel Robin Olds destroyed seven North Vietnamese MiG-21s in twelve minutes by making his F-4 Phantoms look like easy prey.
The Curtiss NC-4 completed the first aerial crossing of the Atlantic in May 1919 - eight years before Lindbergh - and the original aircraft is on free display in Pensacola, Florida.
On August 16, 1942, Navy blimp L-8 drifted back to shore near San Francisco fully intact - but without its two-man crew, who were never found.
The Schneider Trophy seaplane races of the 1920s–30s produced the aerodynamic knowledge that built the Spitfire - and one woman's £100,000 kept that chain unbroken.
The Swamp Ghost B-17F Flying Fortress ditched in a Papua New Guinea swamp in 1942 and was recovered 64 years later, remarkably intact, preserved by the swamp's unusual chemistry.