Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times - a record no pilot has matched - and defined an era of American air racing that shaped the fighter planes of World War II.
TaildraggerThe Gee Bee R-1 Super Sportster set a 252 mph Thompson Trophy record in 1932 - and the one man who flew it to its limit immediately retired from racing.
TaildraggerThe Vought F4U Corsair was rejected by the Navy for carrier operations yet became the most feared propeller-driven combat aircraft of World War II in the hands of Marine aviators.
TaildraggerOn December 23, 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager landed at Edwards Air Force Base after completing the first nonstop, unrefueled flight around the world aboard the Voyager aircraft.
TaildraggerHow a one-eyed Oklahoma roughneck flew a wooden Lockheed Vega around the world twice and discovered the jet stream before science had a name for it.
TaildraggerBessie Coleman became the first African American and first person of Native American descent to earn an international pilot's license in 1921, after every American flight school refused her.
TaildraggerBob Hoover flew combat in WWII, escaped a German POW camp in a stolen Focke-Wulf 190, and performed the greatest airshow act in aviation history.
TaildraggerDoc, the last B-29 Superfortress built in Wichita, flew again on July 17, 2016 after a 29-year, 300,000-volunteer-hour restoration effort.
TaildraggerThe first nonstop transatlantic flight was completed by John Alcock and Arthur Brown on June 14, 1919 - eight years before Lindbergh.
TaildraggerHow Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne used aviation-first engineering to win the 2004 Ansari X Prize and permanently expand what aviation can claim as its territory.
VectorHow Ivan Gates turned post-WWI surplus planes and unemployed pilots into America's most famous barnstorming operation, putting over a million people in the air.
TaildraggerThe 1934 MacRobertson Air Race sent 20 aircraft on an 11,300-mile dash from England to Australia, producing the DH.88 Comet and proving commercial aviation's global future.
TaildraggerThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the toughest single-engine fighter of World War II - a 17,000-pound giant designed to absorb catastrophic damage and still bring its pilot home.
TaildraggerGlenn Curtiss beat Louis Bleriot by six seconds at the 1909 Rheims air meet to win the world's first international air trophy - and reshape American aviation.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear invented barnstorming in 1919, became one of America's most famous men, and died on a Hollywood film set on August 2, 1920, at age 28.
TaildraggerOn October 15, 1783, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier became the first human being in recorded history to leave the ground, rising 84 feet above Paris in a tethered Montgolfier balloon.
TaildraggerOn August 7, 1955, Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston rolled the 707 prototype twice over Lake Washington - a calculated gamble that may have sold the jet age.
TaildraggerThe 1927 Dole Derby sent fifteen aircraft from Oakland to Honolulu for a $25,000 prize - and cost ten lives, reshaping American aviation regulation forever.
TaildraggerThe Dornier Do 335 Pfeil was the fastest piston-engine fighter of WWII at 474 mph - and only one complete example survives, at the Smithsonian.
TaildraggerHow a P-38F Lightning abandoned on the Greenland ice cap in 1942 was recovered from 268 feet of glacial ice and restored to flight 60 years later.
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