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Area 51: Origins

America’s once-secret air base had humble beginnings.

Need for Speed

Airplanes with a mission: Fly faster.

Beyond the Moon

It’s not a place, exactly. But it could be NASA’s next destination.

The Invention of Flight

Inventors, dreamers, daredevils, charlatans: Aviation's early years had them all.

Vietnam Memoir

Stories from the war that shaped a generation.

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U.S. Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager circa 1947.

A peek into the logbooks of history’s notable pilots.
November 2009 | By Tom LeCompte

“Any intelligent person who can learn to drive a car will be able to fly a postwar helicopter after a few easy lessons,” Frank Piasecki confidently told the Los Angeles Times in 1944. Piasecki’s PV-2 is shown here on display at the Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, top.

November 2009 | By Rebecca Maksel

The Bear has been hugging pylons at Reno since 1969.

The winning-est Bearcat in air racing steps up once more to the starting gate.
November 2009 | By Preston Lerner

The Boeing X-48C blended wing-body, the last model tested in the full-scale tunnel, is shown on August 31, 2009. After its last day, September 4, engineers began dismantling the model, as NASA made plans to move forward with the demolition of the tunnel beginning in early 2010.

As NASA prepares to shut down a historic wind tunnel in Virginia, some hope for a stay of execution.
September 10, 2009 | By Michael Klesius

It's not absolutely certain when Blanche Stuart Scott became the first American woman to pilot an airplane (it may have been September 2, 1910, or September 4—Scott herself gave different dates). But either way, it was an accident.The 25-year-old Scott, who also went by the name of Betty, had won f...
September 02, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

A simulation of the Curtiss Reims Racer runs through its paces.

A virtual race to mark the 100th anniversary of the world’s first air meet
August 25, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

In the early days of aviation, any wilderness was a challenge for propeller-driven airplanes made of wood and fabric. And in 1920, there was hardly a territory more rugged and fraught with danger than Alaska.So it was that Billy Mitchell of the Army Air Service, who was always anxious to show off t...
August 24, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

Rutan in his VariEze, back in the day.

Burt Rutan remembers the birth of the VariEze and names his favorite aircraft.
August 2009 | By Linda Shiner

The National Air and Space Museum

A look inside the Smithsonian's Stratoliner.
August 14, 2009 | By Paul Hoversten

In the May 25, 1909 issue of Britain’s The Aero, a caption referred to “The ailerons or small planes” (arrows) on Samuel Cody’s British Army Aeroplane.

September 2009 | By Tom Crouch

Test flights in Akron, Ohio, 1956 — the Inflatoplane’s brief moment in the sun.

A collection of six inventions that prompt a single question: What the…?
September 2009 | By The Editors

The F-14 was the first fighter to rely on a digital computer to optimize performance. Its microprocessor adjusted its wing sweep.

We bring you 10 great ideas that made flying safer, easier, or just a whole lot more fun.
September 2009 | By The Editors

The Boeing 307 Stratoliner was the first airliner able to soar above the storms, thanks to a new cabin pressurization system.

It took a maze of valves and venturis—and a trio of tycoons—to whisk passengers into the stratosphere.
September 2009 | By Nick D'Alto

September 2009 | By The Editors

September 2009 | By J.R. Dailey

Each year the ranks of surviving veterans of World War I—which began on this day 95 years ago—get thinner. Now just a handful are left. Henry Allingham, who joined the Royal Naval Air Service as a teenager in 1915, died on July 18 at the age of 113. He was the last British veteran of the war, and, ...
July 28, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

It’s a tough call for prop-heads: Which do I watch? At 9 p.m. Monday, National Geographic airs “Secret Lives of Charles Lindbergh,” which notes the seven children he fathered with three German women. PBS counters with “History Detectives,” which evaluates the likelihood that a piece of an aircraft...
July 27, 2009 | By Pat Trenner

A hundred years ago, Louis Blériot made the first aerial crossing of the English channel. On Saturday, French Pilot Edmond Salis recreated the flight (see video here), followed a day later by Mikael Carlson of Sweden, who had tried to take off on the day of the centennial, but was grounded by Frenc...
July 27, 2009 | By Tony Reichhardt

August 2009 | By Rebecca Maksel

A technician employs the proverbial 10-foot pole to extract a contaminated filter from a Republic F-84. With samplers mounted, there was no room for wingtip fuel tanks.

Most pilots would head away from a thermonuclear explosion.
August 2009 | By Mark Wolverton

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