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.
Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times - a record no pilot has matched - and defined an era of American air racing that shaped the fighter planes of World War II.
How 80 men flew B-25 bombers off a carrier deck to bomb Tokyo in 1942 - and kept a 71-year promise to honor their fallen.
The Gee Bee R-1 Super Sportster set a 252 mph Thompson Trophy record in 1932 - and the one man who flew it to its limit immediately retired from racing.
The Vought F4U Corsair was rejected by the Navy for carrier operations yet became the most feared propeller-driven combat aircraft of World War II in the hands of Marine aviators.
On December 23, 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager landed at Edwards Air Force Base after completing the first nonstop, unrefueled flight around the world aboard the Voyager aircraft.
How a one-eyed Oklahoma roughneck flew a wooden Lockheed Vega around the world twice and discovered the jet stream before science had a name for it.
In February 1932, bush pilot Wop May flew into Arctic winter to help end Canada's largest manhunt for the Mad Trapper of Rat River.
Bessie Coleman became the first African American and first person of Native American descent to earn an international pilot's license in 1921, after every American flight school refused her.
Bob Hoover flew combat in WWII, escaped a German POW camp in a stolen Focke-Wulf 190, and performed the greatest airshow act in aviation history.
Carl Ben Eielson pioneered Alaska aviation in the 1920s, flew the first transarctic flight in 1928, and died on a November 1929 mercy mission to a fur-trading ship locked in Siberian pack ice.
Doc, the last B-29 Superfortress built in Wichita, flew again on July 17, 2016 after a 29-year, 300,000-volunteer-hour restoration effort.
The first nonstop transatlantic flight was completed by John Alcock and Arthur Brown on June 14, 1919 - eight years before Lindbergh.
On October 14, 1962, USAF Major Richard Heyser's 14-minute U-2 flight over Cuba produced the photographs that triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis.
On August 1, 1943, 178 B-24 Liberators attacked Nazi-controlled oil refineries at treetop level in the costliest and most decorated single-day mission in Army Air Forces history.
How five minutes of SBD Dauntless dive bombing on June 4, 1942 sank three Japanese carriers and permanently shifted the balance of the Pacific War.
How Ivan Gates turned post-WWI surplus planes and unemployed pilots into America's most famous barnstorming operation, putting over a million people in the air.
On July 23, 1983, a unit conversion error left Air Canada Flight 143 without fuel at 41,000 feet - and only exceptional airmanship prevented a catastrophe.
The 1934 MacRobertson Air Race sent 20 aircraft on an 11,300-mile dash from England to Australia, producing the DH.88 Comet and proving commercial aviation's global future.
Flak Bait, serial 41-31773, flew 202 combat missions and took 1,000+ documented hits over occupied Europe - more than any other American aircraft in WWII.
The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the toughest single-engine fighter of World War II - a 17,000-pound giant designed to absorb catastrophic damage and still bring its pilot home.