The Dornier Do 335 Pfeil reached 474 mph on piston power alone - the fastest of its kind - and the only complete airframe survives at Udvar-Hazy.
TaildraggerRejected by the U.S. Navy as unfit for carriers in 1942, the Vought F4U Corsair became the Pacific's most feared fighter in Marine Corps hands - and its enemies named it Whistling Death.
TaildraggerHow a WWII P-38 Lightning buried under 268 feet of Greenland ice for 50 years was located, excavated, and restored to flight in 2002.
TaildraggerThe Vought F4U Corsair was rejected by the U.S. Navy for carrier operations yet became one of the most feared combat aircraft of the Pacific War.
TaildraggerThe Grumman F6F Hellcat reversed American fortunes in the Pacific, earning a 19-to-1 kill ratio and destroying Japan's carrier air arm.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle completed Europe's first publicly recognized 25-mission bomber tour in May 1943; a 14-year restoration at Wright-Patterson unveiled her in 2018.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito was a WWII British bomber built from birch plywood that outran Luftwaffe fighters - a private venture the Air Ministry initially rejected.
TaildraggerOn the night of May 16, 1943, 19 Lancaster bombers flew at 60 feet over black water to deliver a weapon nobody believed could exist.
TaildraggerOn August 7, 1942, Japanese ace Saburo Sakai flew 560 miles home over open ocean with a fractured skull and a destroyed right eye - a story of survival that defines human limits in the cockpit.
TaildraggerHow a downed Japanese Zero fighter recovered from an Alaskan bog in 1942 gave the U.S. Navy the intelligence it needed to turn the tide of the Pacific air war.
TaildraggerHow Barnes Wallis's precisely engineered bouncing bomb and 617 Squadron's low-level attack on Germany's Ruhr dams on May 16–17, 1943 redefined what airpower could accomplish.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle completed 25 combat missions over occupied Europe in 1943, then spent four decades deteriorating outdoors before a 13-year restoration saved her.
TaildraggerThe Flying Tigers flew combat against Japan before America entered WWII, led by a tactical genius the Army had discarded and proven right.
TaildraggerFlak-Bait, a Martin B-26 Marauder, flew 207 combat missions in WWII - more than any other American aircraft - and now sits at the Smithsonian bearing every mark it earned.
TaildraggerThe Lady Be Good, a WWII B-24 Liberator, was found intact in the Sahara 16 years after a faulty radio compass led its crew to bail out 240 miles inside the desert.
TaildraggerThe Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the heaviest single-engine fighter America fielded in WWII, and its toughness and firepower saved the Allied strategic bombing campaign over Europe.
TaildraggerThe de Havilland Mosquito was a twin-engine wooden bomber rejected by the British Air Ministry in 1938 that became one of the most versatile and survivable aircraft of World War II.
TaildraggerThe Memphis Belle completed 25 combat missions over occupied Europe in 1943 and now stands fully restored at the National Museum of the USAF in Dayton.
TaildraggerThe Focke-Wulf Fw 190 was Germany's finest piston fighter - how it shocked the RAF in 1941, how Britain accidentally captured one intact, and why fewer than a dozen fly today.
TaildraggerOn May 16, 1943, 19 Lancasters from 617 Squadron flew at 60 feet in the dark to breach Germany's Ruhr Valley dams using a spinning bouncing bomb.
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