Harold Gillam flew Alaska's worst weather for 14 years without losing a passenger - until a 1943 crash in the mountains above Ketchikan ended his legendary career.
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.
TaildraggerLincoln Beachey was the most celebrated aviator of the early aviation era - a San Francisco daredevil who performed for an estimated 17 million Americans before dying in front of 250,000 at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.
TaildraggerIn 1924, four U.S. Army biplanes and eight men became the first to fly around the world, covering 27,553 miles in 175 days across 28 countries.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito was a twin-engine unarmed wooden bomber the Air Ministry rejected - then feared losing to its own speed.
TaildraggerOn July 23, 1983, a unit conversion error drained both engines of a Boeing 767 at 41,000 feet - and only extraordinary airmanship saved 69 lives.
TaildraggerThe Hughes H-4 Hercules flew exactly once on November 2, 1947 - one minute over Long Beach Harbor that proved a wooden giant could fly.
TaildraggerThe 1934 MacRobertson Air Race from England to Australia produced two legends: a purpose-built wooden racer that won, and a commercial airliner guided down by car headlights.
TaildraggerBessie Coleman became the world's first licensed Black pilot in 1921 - but only after every American flight school turned her away.
TaildraggerIn June 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith flew a heavily overloaded Fokker trimotor from Oakland to Brisbane, becoming the first crew to cross the Pacific Ocean by air.
TaildraggerGlacier Girl is a P-38F Lightning recovered from 268 feet beneath the Greenland ice cap and returned to flight in 2002, sixty years after an emergency landing during Operation Bolero.
TaildraggerOn September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle flew the first fully blind flight at Mitchel Field, demonstrating the instruments that became the foundation of modern IFR.
TaildraggerOn September 1, 1983, KAL Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet fighter after a single navigation mode error sent 269 people 300 miles off course - and directly triggered civilian GPS.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear invented wing walking in 1919 out of necessity - not showmanship - and became barnstorming's defining figure before dying at 29 on a Hollywood film set.
TaildraggerOn August 6, 1955, Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled a 100,000-pound prototype jet over Lake Washington - and in doing so, sold the airplane that launched the jet age.
TaildraggerThe Convair B-36 Peacemaker was the largest combat aircraft ever mass-produced, holding nuclear deterrence watch from 1948 to 1959 with a 230-foot wingspan.
TaildraggerOn November 20, 1953, Scott Crossfield became the first person to fly at Mach 2, reaching 1,291 mph in the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket over the Mojave Desert.
TowerWiley Post's 1933 solo world flight broke a record and produced the first airborne evidence of the jet stream, shaping aviation to this day.
TaildraggerOn December 14, 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager completed the first nonstop, unrefueled circumnavigation of the Earth, landing after 216 hours aloft in an aircraft built by hand in a desert hangar.
TaildraggerOn November 2, 1947, Howard Hughes flew the world's largest airplane - the H-4 Hercules - one mile across Long Beach Harbor, vindicating years of ridicule and an $18 million gamble.
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