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.
Frank Luke Jr. shot down 18 enemy targets in 17 days in 1918 to become America's most efficient WWI ace and the first aviator to earn the Medal of Honor.
Harold Gillam flew Alaska's worst weather for 14 years without losing a passenger - until a 1943 crash in the mountains above Ketchikan ended his legendary career.
Ivan Gates never learned to fly, yet his Gates Flying Circus introduced an estimated one million Americans to flight and helped forge U.S. aviation culture in the 1920s.
Lincoln Beachey was the most celebrated aviator of the early aviation era - a San Francisco daredevil who performed for an estimated 17 million Americans before dying in front of 250,000 at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.
On May 16, 1943, nineteen Lancaster crews flew at sixty feet above dark water to destroy Germany's Ruhr Valley dams in aviation's most daring precision raid.
In 1924, four U.S. Army biplanes and eight men became the first to fly around the world, covering 27,553 miles in 175 days across 28 countries.
The de Havilland Mosquito was a twin-engine unarmed wooden bomber the Air Ministry rejected - then feared losing to its own speed.
On July 23, 1983, a unit conversion error drained both engines of a Boeing 767 at 41,000 feet - and only extraordinary airmanship saved 69 lives.
How a crashed Japanese Zero in an Alaskan swamp shaped the Hellcat's design - and fueled the most lethal air combat record in US Navy history.
The Hawker Hurricane destroyed 55% of German aircraft in the Battle of Britain - more than the Spitfire - yet history gave the glory to its more glamorous stablemate.
The Hughes H-4 Hercules flew exactly once on November 2, 1947 - one minute over Long Beach Harbor that proved a wooden giant could fly.
The 1934 MacRobertson Air Race from England to Australia produced two legends: a purpose-built wooden racer that won, and a commercial airliner guided down by car headlights.
Bessie Coleman became the world's first licensed Black pilot in 1921 - but only after every American flight school turned her away.
In June 1928, Charles Kingsford Smith flew a heavily overloaded Fokker trimotor from Oakland to Brisbane, becoming the first crew to cross the Pacific Ocean by air.
On September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle flew the first fully blind flight at Mitchel Field, demonstrating the instruments that became the foundation of modern IFR.
On September 1, 1983, KAL Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet fighter after a single navigation mode error sent 269 people 300 miles off course - and directly triggered civilian GPS.
Ormer Locklear invented wing walking in 1919 out of necessity - not showmanship - and became barnstorming's defining figure before dying at 29 on a Hollywood film set.
On August 6, 1955, Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston barrel-rolled a 100,000-pound prototype jet over Lake Washington - and in doing so, sold the airplane that launched the jet age.
The Convair B-36 Peacemaker was the largest combat aircraft ever mass-produced, holding nuclear deterrence watch from 1948 to 1959 with a 230-foot wingspan.
The Memphis Belle was the first B-17 crew to complete 25 combat missions over Nazi Europe, a milestone that reshaped morale across the entire Eighth Air Force in 1943.