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.
Bob Reeve turned Alaska's tidal mudflats and glaciers into a commercial freight operation in 1932, building one of aviation's most unlikely empires from nothing.
Glenn Curtiss beat Louis Bleriot by six seconds at the 1909 Rheims air meet to win the world's first international air trophy - and reshape American aviation.
Richard Bong of Poplar, Wisconsin earned 40 aerial kills flying a P-38 Lightning over New Guinea - a record no American pilot has ever broken.
How Barnes Wallis's spinning bomb and 617 Squadron's precision flying destroyed two of Germany's most critical dams in a single night in 1943.
Ormer Locklear invented barnstorming in 1919, became one of America's most famous men, and died on a Hollywood film set on August 2, 1920, at age 28.
On October 15, 1783, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier became the first human being in recorded history to leave the ground, rising 84 feet above Paris in a tethered Montgolfier balloon.
On August 7, 1955, Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston rolled the 707 prototype twice over Lake Washington - a calculated gamble that may have sold the jet age.
The de Havilland Mosquito was a twice-rejected wooden aircraft that became WWII's most versatile combat plane - outrunning enemies it was never supposed to fight.
The 1927 Dole Derby sent fifteen aircraft from Oakland to Honolulu for a $25,000 prize - and cost ten lives, reshaping American aviation regulation forever.
The Dornier Do 335 Pfeil was the fastest piston-engine fighter of WWII at 474 mph - and only one complete example survives, at the Smithsonian.
How a P-38F Lightning abandoned on the Greenland ice cap in 1942 was recovered from 268 feet of glacial ice and restored to flight 60 years later.
On January 26, 1990, the SR-71 Blackbird set a transcontinental speed record of 2,124 mph on its final flight before retiring to the Smithsonian.
R.J. Mitchell designed the Spitfire's iconic elliptical wing from a decade of Schneider Trophy racing, completing the prototype while dying of cancer at 42.
In 1911, Cal Rodgers flew a fragile Wright biplane 3,200 miles across America in 84 days, surviving 60-plus crashes to prove a continent could be crossed by air.
Don Sheldon completed over 6,000 glacier landings in Alaska's Ruth Amphitheater across 27 years, defining what safe, disciplined bush flying looks like in the world's most demanding terrain.
Flak-Bait, a Martin B-26 Marauder, flew 202 combat missions in WWII - more than any other Allied aircraft - and carries over 1,000 patches as proof.
Frank Luke Jr. compiled 18 aerial kills in 17 days in WWI, earning Eddie Rickenbacker's declaration that he was the greatest individual fighter of the entire war.
Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times - a record never matched - by combining theatrical showmanship with genuine pylon racing skill.
On October 14, 1908, S.F. Cody - a Wild West showman from Iowa - made the first officially recognized powered flight in Great Britain, covering 1,400 feet over Laffan's Plain.
The P-47 Thunderbolt was the heaviest single-engine fighter ever mass-produced, and the 56th Fighter Group made it the highest-scoring outfit in the Eighth Air Force.