Lincoln Beachey invented the American airshow before the term existed, pioneering the Death Dip and inverted flight before dying at 27 in 1915.
TaildraggerIvan Gates never learned to fly, yet his Gates Flying Circus introduced an estimated one million Americans to flight and helped forge U.S. aviation culture in the 1920s.
TaildraggerHow Army instructor Ormer Locklear invented wing-walking in 1918 and died filming a Hollywood stunt in 1920, shaping modern aviation.
TaildraggerHow professor Art Scholl turned a gentle de Havilland Chipmunk into the Pennzoil Super Chipmunk and mastered the inverted flat spin.
TaildraggerHow Betty Skelton flew her Pitts Special 'Little Stinker' inverted through a ribbon 12 feet off the grass and became aviation's First Lady of Firsts.
TaildraggerPatty Wagstaff won three consecutive US National Aerobatic Championships from 1991-1993, forever changing competition aerobatics.
TaildraggerHow five Texas pilots who bought a forgotten P-51 Mustang in 1957 launched the warbird preservation movement that saved thousands of WWII aircraft.
TaildraggerBob Hoover's dead-stick airshow routine in a stock twin-engine Shrike Commander remains the most extraordinary demonstration of airmanship ever performed.
Taildragger