On April 6, 1924, four U.S. Army biplanes departed Seattle to attempt the first aerial circumnavigation of Earth - 26,000 miles with no radio nav, no weather radar, and no margin for error.
TaildraggerThe North American X-15 set a crewed aircraft speed record of Mach 6.72 in 1967 that still stands, and flew thirteen missions above the recognized boundary of space.
VectorThe North American XB-70 Valkyrie was America's most technically advanced Cold War bomber - capable of Mach 3 at 70,000 feet but cancelled before entering service.
TaildraggerOrmer Locklear climbed out of a moving Curtiss Jenny in 1917 to fix a loose radiator cap - and accidentally invented American barnstorming.
TaildraggerThe SR-71 Blackbird flew over 3,500 Cold War missions at Mach 3.2 and was never once shot down - here's the full story of how it was built and why it worked.
TaildraggerLincoln Beachey flew before 17 million Americans and was called the greatest aviator who ever lived by Orville Wright - before dying at age 28.
TaildraggerGlacier Girl is a P-38 Lightning recovered from 270 feet of Greenland ice in 1992 and restored to flying condition, taking to the sky again in 2002.
TaildraggerIn 1924, eight U.S. Army Air Service airmen became the first to circle the globe by air, crossing 26,000 miles in open-cockpit biplanes before Charles Lindbergh ever left the ground.
TaildraggerCharles Carpenter, an Illinois schoolteacher turned Army aviator, bolted six bazookas to a Piper Cub and hunted German tanks across France in 1944.
TaildraggerBeryl Markham flew solo from England to Nova Scotia in 1936 - east into the prevailing winds, at night - and wrote what Hemingway called the best prose he'd ever read.
TaildraggerBob Reeve pioneered glacier runway operations in 1930s Alaska, turning tidal mud flats and remote ice fields into reliable supply routes for Wrangell Mountain mines.
TaildraggerHow the Boeing 747-200's upgraded engines eliminated the mandatory Anchorage fuel stop and permanently reshaped transpacific air travel.
TowerThe first solo shirt-cut is aviation's oldest student milestone ritual, tracing back over 100 years to WWI-era open-cockpit training and the moment an instructor no longer needed to hold on.
RampOperation Vittles - the 1948 Berlin Airlift - delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies across 277,000 flights to prove airpower could sustain life, not just end it.
TaildraggerThe Lockheed P-38 Lightning was WWII's most distinctive fighter - twin-engine, twin-boom, and with the range to change the outcome of the Pacific war.
TaildraggerOn September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle completed the world's first fully blind flight at Mitchell Field - the 15-minute demonstration that invented IFR.
TaildraggerHow the Gates Flying Circus flew over a million Americans in the 1920s and built the cultural foundation for commercial aviation.
TaildraggerHarold Gillam, Alaska's legendary Ghost Pilot, vanished in January 1943 near Ketchikan - and four survivors endured 31 days in the wreckage before rescue.
TaildraggerOn May 16, 1919, the Curtiss NC-4 became the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic Ocean - a feat that history has largely handed to someone else.
TaildraggerHow SBD Dauntless BuNo 2106, a Battle of Midway veteran, spent 50 years in Lake Michigan and was recovered and restored.
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