aviation pioneer
Lincoln Beachey flew before 17 million Americans and was called the greatest aviator who ever lived by Orville Wright - before dying at age 28.
The Hangar
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.
restoration spotlight
Glacier Girl is a P-38 Lightning recovered from 270 feet of Greenland ice in 1992 and restored to flying condition, taking to the sky again in 2002.
The Douglas World Cruiser Chicago and the Army Airmen Who Circled the Globe in 1924
In 1924, eight U.S. Army Air Service airmen became the first to circle the globe by air, crossing 26,000 miles in open-cockpit biplanes before Charles Lindbergh ever left the ground.
Bazooka Charlie - The History Teacher Who Strapped Rockets to a Piper Cub and Went Tank Hunting
Charles Carpenter, an Illinois schoolteacher turned Army aviator, bolted six bazookas to a Piper Cub and hunted German tanks across France in 1944.
Vulcan XH Five Five Eight - The Last V-Bomber and the People Who Refused to Let It Go
XH558 was the last airworthy Avro Vulcan, restored by volunteers and public donations after 14 years on the ground to fly again for eight seasons.
Beryl Markham and West with the Night - The Solo Crossing Nobody Believed She Could Make
Beryl Markham flew solo from England to Nova Scotia in 1936 - east into the prevailing winds, at night - and wrote what Hemingway called the best prose he'd ever read.
Bob Reeve and the Glacier Runways - The Alaska Bush Pilot Who Invented a New Kind of Landing
Bob Reeve pioneered glacier runway operations in 1930s Alaska, turning tidal mud flats and remote ice fields into reliable supply routes for Wrangell Mountain mines.
Operation Chastise - Guy Gibson, the Bouncing Bomb, and the Night 617 Squadron Attacked the Dams
On the night of May 16–17, 1943, 19 Lancaster bombers and 133 airmen executed Operation Chastise, breaching Nazi Germany's Ruhr valley dams with Barnes Wallis's revolutionary bouncing bomb.
Operation Vittles - the Berlin Airlift and the June Day the West Answered a Blockade with an Airplane
Operation Vittles - the 1948 Berlin Airlift - delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies across 277,000 flights to prove airpower could sustain life, not just end it.
The Lockheed P-38 Lightning and the Fork-Tailed Devil That Ruled Two Oceans
The Lockheed P-38 Lightning was WWII's most distinctive fighter - twin-engine, twin-boom, and with the range to change the outcome of the Pacific war.
Don Sheldon and the Mountain House - The Glacier Pilot Who Built a Home at the Roof of Alaska
Don Sheldon pioneered high-altitude glacier flying in the Alaska Range, built a wilderness hut at 5,800 feet by airlifting materials in a Cessna 180, and left behind a tradition that still defines Talkeetna flying today.
Jimmy Doolittle's Blind Flight and the Fifteen Minutes That Invented IFR
On September 24, 1929, Jimmy Doolittle completed the world's first fully blind flight at Mitchell Field - the 15-minute demonstration that invented IFR.
Operation Tidal Wave and the five Medals of Honor won in one afternoon over Ploesti
On August 1, 1943, 177 B-24 Liberators flew at treetop level into the most defended target in Europe, earning five Medals of Honor in a single afternoon.
The Gates Flying Circus and the Upside-Down Pilot Who Flew a Million Americans
How the Gates Flying Circus flew over a million Americans in the 1920s and built the cultural foundation for commercial aviation.
Harold Gillam, the Ghost Pilot of Alaska, and the Thirty-One Days in the Mountains Above Ketchikan
Harold Gillam, Alaska's legendary Ghost Pilot, vanished in January 1943 near Ketchikan - and four survivors endured 31 days in the wreckage before rescue.
The Curtiss NC-4 and the Forgotten First Crossing of the Atlantic
On May 16, 1919, the Curtiss NC-4 became the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic Ocean - a feat that history has largely handed to someone else.
The SBD Dauntless and the five minutes that turned the Pacific War at Midway
On June 4, 1942, a fuel-starved squadron of SBD Dauntless dive bombers sank three Japanese fleet carriers in roughly five minutes, permanently shifting the balance of power in the Pacific War.
SBD Dauntless Bureau Number Twenty-One Oh Six, the Battle of Midway veteran they pulled from the bottom of Lake Michigan
How SBD Dauntless BuNo 2106, a Battle of Midway veteran, spent 50 years in Lake Michigan and was recovered and restored.
The Heinkel He 176 and the morning of June twentieth, nineteen thirty-nine, when a man first flew on rocket power alone
On June 20, 1939, Erich Warsitz flew the Heinkel He 176 - history's first aircraft powered by rocket alone.
Pangborn, Herndon, and Miss Veedol - the first nonstop flight across the Pacific, and the man who climbed out on the wing to save it
How Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon flew the first nonstop Pacific crossing in 1931 - and climbed onto the wing mid-flight to survive it.