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Stories from Rebecca Maksel

Flying Sharks!

If you thought you were safe in the air, think again.

Post wearing a glass eye for this portrait by Underwood & Underwood.

Wiley Post, Ex-Con

In 1921, the famous flier did a stint in the Oklahoma state penitentiary

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Wiley Post’s Historic Around-the-World Flight

Eighty years ago, a one-eyed oilman made the first solo flight around the world.

Advertising Airshows

A colorful history from the National Air and Space Museum’s poster collections.

Paris Air Show 2013

Photos from Le Bourget’s 50th extravaganza.

LIFE magazine cover, September 21, 1959. Top row, left to right: Jo Schirra, Louise Shepard. Middle row: Annie Glenn, Rene Carpenter, Marjorie Slayton. Bottom row: Trudy Cooper, Betty Grissom.

The Astronaut Wives Club

Dishy gossip from a new book about the wives of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts

While the Apollo lunar module is a real test vehicle, it has been modified to look like the Apollo 11 lander for display.

What’s Real, and What’s Not?

At the National Air and Space Museum, some artifacts are more genuine than others.

The LB-30’s black underside made it extremely visible to U-boat lookouts.

Paint it White

How a simple change in color scheme helped RAF bombers defeat Hitler’s U-boats

Kamikaze Bats

The plan: Strap napalm bombs onto bats, and drop them over World War II Japan

PSA, "The World's Friendliest Airline."

Sex and the Airlines

The evolution of the stewardess, from airborne homemaker to aerial sex kitten

Crashed B-24 in Papua New Guinea.

Lost, Not Forgotten

Wrecked aircraft from around the world are showcased in Dietmar Eckell’s forthcoming book

The dirigible Los Angeles "docking" at the Empire State Building. The composite 1930 photograph is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's traveling exhibition, "Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop."

Docking on the Empire State Building

Despite plans for a mooring station, only one airship ever docked at the Empire State Building

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Shenzhou’s Pigs In Space

As far as we know, Captain Link Hogthrob remains the first porcine astronaut

UK cinema poster for Thunderball (1965).

Rescue, James Bond Style

Some of 007’s imaginative toys were based on actual inventions

An EA-6B Prowler launches from catapult three aboard the USS Enterprise.

Who Inspects the Navy’s Aircraft Carriers?

It takes a (uniformed) village

Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Lab gave the Museum at Transit 5 navigational satellite (shown here) to replace the Oscar 17 satellite that was formerly on display. The Transit 5 can be seen in the Museum’s new exhibition “Time and Navigation,” which opens in March.

A Tale of Two Satellites

An artifact returns to service after being on display for eight years.

Gladys Roy and Ivan Unger play tennis on the wing of a biplane in flight, 1925.

Tennis, Anyone?

When she wasn’t playing tennis on the wing of a biplane in flight, Gladys Roy was dancing the Charleston

Used primarily for medevac missions during the Korean War, the Sikorsky HO5S-1 was also an observation platform, artillery spotter and troop transport.

The Sikorsky HO5S-1 Made its Name Flying Medevac Missions in Korea.

More than 10,000 troops were evacuated.

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Chapeau by Blériot

In the winter of 1909, chic Parisians sported Blériot, Antoinette, and Voisin biplanes on their heads.

Who knows what secrets were passed between feathered operatives?

Spy Pigeons

Unlikely soldiers during World War II: more than 250,000 pigeons were deployed by the British

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