On the morning of July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, took off from Lae, New Guinea, on one of the last legs in their historic attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Their next destination was Howland Island in the central Pacific Ocean, some 2,500 miles ...read more
When it was all over, Captain John Alcock, an English pilot, telegraphed his story to newspaper reporters around the world. He was exhausted by a recent in-air ordeal that had culminated in a risky plane crash in Ireland along with his navigator and flying partner, Arthur Whitten ...read more
The first successful airplane pilot, Wilbur Wright, flew his 1903 craft by lying on his stomach, pushing and pulling levers as the wind swept over his head. Since then, piloting a plane has become a lot less physical thanks to automation and autopilot functions that do a lot of ...read more
In retrospect, it seems odd that Henry Woodhouse got away with as much as he did for more than half a century. After all, it wasn’t every day that a paroled murderer with no discernible education became a darling of America’s burgeoning aviation elite—heralded as a renowned ...read more
September 11, 2001 was supposed to be a typical day for Lieutenant Heather Penney of the District of Columbia Air National Guard. As Penney recalled in a 2016 interview with HISTORY, that morning she was attending a briefing at Andrews Air Force Base, planning the month’s ...read more
Since the beginning of recorded history, bold women have been casting off the shackles of conventional life and traveling land, sea and sky to explore the world. Read on to discover the stories of seven of these courageous women—who ruled empires, discovered lost cities and ...read more
1. First woman to make a transatlantic flight In 1928 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger with pilots Wilmer Stultz and Luis Gordon. With this feat she gained international attention, providing an opportunity for her to become a ...read more
On the night of May 21, 1927, aviator Charles Lindbergh touched down at France’s Le Bourget Field, having completed history’s first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Upon exiting the Spirit of St. Louis, the 25-year-old American was mobbed by a crowd of 150,000 people ...read more
While it’s become synonymous with the blue and white jetliner stamped with the words “United States of America,” Air Force One is actually a call sign applied to any aircraft carrying the American president. The name was created following an incident in 1953, when President ...read more
The Case for Alberto Santos-DumontTens of millions of people around the world received their first introduction to Alberto Santos-Dumont when they tuned into the Opening Ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and watched as a nattily attired, mustachioed man ...read more
Robert A. Hoover was born January 24, 1922, in Nashville, Tennessee. He began taking flying lessons at the age of 15, and wasted no time before learning to perform loops and dives. At 18, he joined the Tennessee Air National Guard. During World War II, Hoover was based in North ...read more
On March 19, 1941, the U.S. War Department established the 99th Pursuit Squadron, which, along with a few other squadrons formed later, became better known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Consisting of America’s first black military pilots, these units confronted racism at home in ...read more
1. Sir George Cayley The dream of manned flight dates back to the ancient world, but a true understanding of aerodynamic principles and practical aircraft design didn’t arrive until the work of the English polymath George Cayley. In 1799, the man known as the “Father of ...read more
It began as nothing more than a routine training flight. At 2:10 p.m. on December 5, 1945, five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off from a Naval Air Station in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The planes—collectively known as “Flight 19”—were scheduled to tackle a three-hour exercise ...read more
1. British South American Airways Star Tiger (January 30, 1948) The waters of the Atlantic Ocean in what would be dubbed the Bermuda Triangle had already been the scene of a mysterious aviation incident in 1945 when five American torpedo bombers on a routine training mission all ...read more
Fred Noonan has been consigned to a historical footnote as Amelia Earhart‘s navigator. That’s partly because little is known about him. When he and Earhart vanished on July 2, 1937, headlines blared about the disappearance of “Lady Lindy” and the frantic search for her Lockheed ...read more
When the scarlet Lockheed Vega touched down, scattering a herd of cows, farmhand Dan McCallion crossed himself. He puzzled at the grease-smeared face and tousled hair of the pilot who emerged from the cockpit, unsure whether a man or woman had landed in his boss’ Londonderry ...read more
Wilbur and Orville Wright were American inventors and pioneers of aviation. In 1903 the Wright brothers achieved the first powered, sustained and controlled airplane flight; they surpassed their own milestone two years later when they built and flew the first fully practical ...read more
