Rebecca Maksel

Rebecca Maksel is a senior associate editor at Air & Space.

Armor of George Clifford, Third Earl of Cumberland.

Getting Medieval

When the Eighth Air Force wanted to protect its bomber crews, it asked medieval armor specialists for advice

Advertising poster for KLM Royal Dutch Air Lines, circa 1938, showing a cross-section of a Fokker-assembled Douglas DC-2.

Mind if I Smoke?

Remember when passengers used to toss lit cigarettes out the airplane window? No, really!

Catch-22 began life as "Catch-18," a short, 10-page piece included in the April 1955 issue of New World Writing.

Catch-22 At Fifty

Writer Joseph Heller drew on his own wartime experience for his 1961 masterpiece

Ask a Veteran

These Museum staffers and volunteers once served their country in the armed forces. Now they serve in a different way.

Though he had a student pilot’s permit, Pyle never got a license.

Byline: Ernie Pyle

The country's best-known war correspondent learned his trade as an aviation reporter.

With telescopes both inside and out, Museum educators use a variety of filters to show visitors spots on the sun, craters on the moon, and the phases of Venus.

In the Museum: The People’s Observatory

Bringing telescopes where the people are.

Haunted Airfields

For Halloween, a collection of weird tales about airports and aircraft

The Blériot XI still flies as of July 2009.

The World’s First Warplane

One hundred years ago this Sunday, on October 23, 1911, Captain Carlo Piazza climbed onto his spindly Blériot XI and made military history

By 1944, Ernest Taylor Pyle (in Normandy, France) had won millions of loyal readers and a Pulitzer.

On the Wing and On the Ground

Ernie Pyle's aviation and war dispatches.

Aviation Art: The Lighter Side

In wartime, a customized Zippo was part of an airman's identity

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Going Once….The 1920 Pulitzer Race Trophy

“Never in the history of official flying in America has a man traveled with such great velocity”

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Pirates Ready to Board the Space Station

Ahoy there, Matey!

An emotional Gene Breiner (at lectern, with daughter Joyce and General Jack Dailey, director of the National Air and Space Museum) donated Plane Jane to the Museum this past June in hopes of inspiring future pilots.

In the Museum: A Fleet’s Final Flight

A civilian flight trainer enters the collections.

The World's Best Pickup Truck

A mainstay of air transportation, the Huey provided the soundtrack to the Vietnam War

A Northrop YB-49 in flight over desert, probably in the vicinity of Muroc, California.

Are any of Northrop's "flying wings" from the 1940s still around?

What ever happened to the YB-49 and the XB-35?

Commander Lt. Col. Tim Conklin "throwing snakes."

Conan Knows Best

Who can forget the immortal question posed by the Mongol General in the 1982 classic Conan the Barbarian?

The evil Red Skull escapes in a flying wing.

Captain America and the Horten Brothers

A Horten H IX V3 look-alike appears alongside Chris Evans in "Captain America"

Visitors assemble space station elements in the Moving Beyond Earth gallery.

In the Museum: My Vostok Is Bigger Than Your Mercury

Launching two very different capsules—and a space race.

The flight crew gets tough: Practicing how to disable drunks.

The Not-So-Friendly Skies

The history (and danger) of alcohol on airplanes

"Task Force Hornets" by Lawrence Beal-Smith, 1943.

The Battle of Midway, 69 Years Later

“The Battle of Midway was probably the most important battle in the Pacific war during World War II”

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