Aviation history and storytelling with Taildragger. Warbird restorations, legendary pilots, famous flights, and the stories that shaped aviation from the Wright Brothers to the Space Shuttle.
The Hughes H-4 Hercules flew exactly once on November 2, 1947 - one mile at 70 feet above Long Beach Harbor - and proved every critic wrong.
How eighteen P-38 Lightnings flew 435 miles in radio silence on April 18, 1943, to intercept and kill Japan's greatest naval strategist.
The Northrop YB-49 flying wing first flew October 21, 1947 - a revolutionary bomber canceled under disputed circumstances that became the direct ancestor of the B-2 Spirit.
On November 22, 1935, Pan American's China Clipper became the first aircraft to complete a scheduled transpacific airmail crossing, covering 8,000 miles in seven days.
How R.J. Mitchell designed the Supermarine Spitfire while dying of cancer - and why his elliptical-winged fighter changed the course of 1940.
How Douglas Corrigan flew from New York to Dublin in 1938 after the CAA denied his transatlantic permit three times - and maintained his alibi for the rest of his life.
On September 4, 1936, Beryl Markham became the first woman to fly the North Atlantic solo from east to west - the hard direction, against the wind.
Bessie Coleman became the world's first licensed Black aviator in 1921 by doing what no American institution would allow - learning to fly in France.
Doc, a 1945 Boeing B-29 Superfortress, returned to flight on July 17, 2016, after a 29-year volunteer restoration in Wichita - one of only two airworthy B-29s remaining.
Jimmy Angel, a Missouri barnstormer-turned-bush pilot, discovered the world's highest waterfall from a cockpit in 1933 and later crash-landed on top of it.
Lincoln Beachey was America's first great airshow pilot, performing before an estimated 17 million people before his death at 28 above San Francisco Bay in 1915.
On the night of May 16, 1943, RAF 617 Squadron breached two German dams using Barnes Wallis's revolutionary spinning bomb in one of WWII's most precisely engineered air raids.
Nineteen Lancasters flew at sixty feet above black water on May 16–17, 1943, to breach Germany's Ruhr dams in Operation Chastise.
On August 1, 1943, 177 B-24s flew a low-level strike against Ploesti's oil refineries - earning five Medals of Honor in a single afternoon.
On August 7, 1955, Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston rolled the Dash 80 prototype twice over Lake Washington - and changed commercial aviation history.
Jimmy Doolittle set a world closed-course speed record of 252.686 mph in the Gee Bee R-1 at the 1932 National Air Races - then walked away from racing forever.
The Memphis Belle completed 25 combat missions over Nazi-occupied Europe in 1943 and now stands fully restored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base after a 17-year effort.
In July 1933, one-eyed pilot Wiley Post flew the Winnie Mae solo around the world in 7 days, 18 hours, and 49 minutes - and changed aviation forever.
On October 19, 1901, Alberto Santos-Dumont flew Airship Number Six around the Eiffel Tower - proving for the first time that a machine could fly to a chosen destination.
Carl Ben Eielson proved Alaska could be crossed by air, flew the first trans-Arctic flight in 1928, and died on a Bering Sea rescue mission in 1929 at age 32.