On October 24, 1944, Commander David McCampbell and one wingman intercepted 60 Japanese aircraft over the Philippine Sea, producing the most lethal single aerial mission in U.S. naval history.
TaildraggerOn August 7, 1942, Japanese ace Saburo Sakai flew 560 miles home from Guadalcanal alone - one eye destroyed, barely conscious, no radio.
TaildraggerThe Hughes H-4 Hercules flew just once in 1947, but its single minute over Long Beach Harbor silenced Senate critics and left an enduring mark on aviation engineering.
TaildraggerIn December 1943, a Luftwaffe pilot chose mercy over victory over the North Sea - and the two men who lived it didn't find each other again for 46 years.
TaildraggerDouglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 crash, proved he could still fly to operational standards, was discharged on a technicality, then returned in WWII to lead RAF fighter squadrons.
TaildraggerOn September 2, 1944, a 20-year-old Navy pilot named George H.W. Bush completed his bomb run over Chichi Jima with his engine on fire, bailed out, and floated four hours before a submarine rescued him.
TaildraggerThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the heaviest single-engine fighter of WWII - and its near-indestructibility made it one of the most effective combat aircraft ever built.
TaildraggerRichard Bong shot down 40 Japanese aircraft over the Pacific - a record no American fighter pilot has matched in over 80 years - and died the same morning the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima.
TaildraggerThe 332nd Fighter Group flew over 15,000 combat sorties in WWII, built an exceptional bomber escort record, and dismantled the official Army doctrine that said Black men were unfit to fly.
TaildraggerHow 100 American pilots resigned their commissions and defeated the Japanese Air Force over Burma and China before the US officially entered WWII.
TaildraggerOn April 18, 1943, sixteen P-38 Lightnings flew a precisely calculated intercept mission over Bougainville and shot down Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, architect of Pearl Harbor.
TaildraggerHow a five-paragraph memo by an RAF test pilot led to the engine swap that transformed the P-51 Mustang into the war-winning fighter of World War II.
TaildraggerHow a single German navigation error on August 24, 1940 triggered the chain of decisions that redirected the Luftwaffe away from the RAF's airfields - and saved Britain.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The Memphis Belle, the B Seventeen That Flew Twenty-Five and Went Home to Prove It Could Be Done.
TaildraggerOperation Tidal Wave, the August 1, 1943 low-level B-24 raid on Ploesti, became the costliest U.S. air mission of WWII.
TaildraggerHow 16 P-38 Lightnings flew a 1,000-mile dead-reckoning ambush to kill Admiral Yamamoto, the mastermind of Pearl Harbor.
TaildraggerHow the B-26 Marauder Flak-Bait flew ~207 combat missions without losing a crewman - and why the Smithsonian is conserving her rivet by rivet.
TaildraggerOperation Tidal Wave was the daring August 1, 1943 low-level B-24 raid on Ploesti's oil refineries - costly, heroic, and strategically incomplete.
TaildraggerRadio Hangar explores The Night Witches, the 588th Night Bomber Regiment and the Wood-and-Canvas Biplanes Soviet Women Flew With the Engine Cut.
TaildraggerOn July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber hit the Empire State Building in fog - and elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver survived a 75-story fall.
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