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 Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was the most-produced American fighter of WWII, built by a Georgian engineer whose philosophy of excess saved thousands of lives.
On October 14, 1943, the Eighth Air Force lost 60 B-17s and 650 airmen over Germany, forcing a reckoning with America's daylight precision bombing doctrine.
On July 19, 1989, United Flight 232's crew flew a crippled DC-10 to Sioux City using only engine thrust after losing all hydraulic control - saving 185 lives.
The 29-year story of how Tony Mazzolini found B-29 'Doc' in the Mojave Desert and returned her to the Wichita skies where she was built.
Douglas Bader lost both legs in a 1931 crash at Reading Aerodrome and went on to command a RAF fighter wing in the Battle of Britain.
On April 16, 1912, Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly the English Channel solo - hours after the Titanic sank and almost no one noticed.
John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight on June 14–15, 1919, crossing from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 hours and 27 minutes - eight years before Lindbergh.
Ormer Locklear became America's most famous aviator in 1919 by walking on the wings of flying biplanes - and died doing it at 28.
Roscoe Turner won the Thompson Trophy three times in the 1930s, flew with a lion, and turned air racing into the spectacle that built World War II's fighter fleet.
How the de Havilland Comet's fatal 1954 crashes revealed that square window corners cause fatigue cracks - and permanently shaped how every pressurized aircraft is built.
The de Havilland Mosquito was a WWII bomber built from wood, rejected by Britain's Air Ministry, and faster than most Luftwaffe fighters it encountered.
On September 28, 1924, the Douglas World Cruiser Chicago completed the first circumnavigation of the globe by aircraft - 175 days and 27,553 miles after departing Seattle.
In January 1929, pilot Wop May flew diphtheria antitoxin 350 miles through -40°F cold to save children in Fort Vermilion, Alberta - proving the airplane was infrastructure, not adventure.
Before crossing the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh spent years as a wing walker and barnstormer, building the skills and judgment that made the 1927 flight possible.
Bob Hoover escaped a German POW camp by stealing a Focke-Wulf 190 and became the airshow pilot Neil Armstrong, Jimmy Doolittle, and Chuck Yeager all called the greatest they ever saw.
In 1911, Calbraith Perry Rodgers became the first person to fly across America - 84 days, 4,300 miles, and a rebuilt aircraft that barely resembled the one that left New York.
On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis to Mach 1.06 above the Mojave Desert, becoming the first pilot to break the sound barrier in level flight.
Don Sheldon pioneered glacier landings in the Alaska Range from Talkeetna, Alaska, building the air-access foundation that made modern Denali mountaineering possible.
Flak-Bait, a Martin B-26 Marauder that flew 207 combat missions over Europe - more than any other American aircraft in the theater - is the sole surviving complete Marauder and is currently being restored at the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.
The Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew over 23,000 combat missions in wood-and-canvas biplanes - and terrified the Wehrmacht enough to earn a nickname.