Air & Space Magazine | Smithsonian Magazine

In a flash, military aircraft adopted the turbojet, and propellers were out. Favorites like the North American T-6 trainer were retired.

Defining Moments

The inventions, institutions, gadgets, and lucky breaks that have shaped the story of the airplane

March 2003

Wrong Turns

When’s the last time you caught a ride in an autogiro?

March 2003

Jimmy Doolittle with his Curtiss R3C-2 Racer, the plane in which he won the 1925 Schneider Trophy race.

10 All-Time Great Pilots

Machines alone could not have pushed the airplane forward

March 2003

10 Milestone Flights

You wouldn’t have wanted to be along on most of them.

March 2003

100 Ways to Celebrate 100 Years of Flight

An Air & Space/Smithsonian guide to a centennial’s worth of fun and flying.

March 2003

In Search of the Real Wright Flyer

Building a replica of the first airplane requires a certain resourcefulness. Anybody got any horsehide glue?

January 2003

A structural test article of the Soviet Buran space shuttle, on display in Moscow in 2017.

White Elephant

How the Soviet Buran space shuttle helped the United States win the cold war.

January 2003

Restoration: Going the Distance

The ninth life of a PBY-5A Cat.

January 2003

CorsairFest

There’s a lot more to the F4U than its past association with black sheep.

January 2003

Seafarers

Bathing beauties from the time when aircraft first crossed oceans.

January 2003

Chalk’s Ocean Airways

Since 1919, this little airline has managed to keep its head above water

January 2003

Will the Air Force Finally Get a Spaceplane?

If Boeing’s X-37 can maneuver politically as well as in space.

January 2003

Winner Take All

All the nail biting, second guessing, and sheer engineering brilliance in the battle to build the better Joint Strike Fighter.

January 2003

ShinMaywa’s US-1A, cleansed of the corrosive sea after every mission, continues an ancestral line of flying boats.

Giant Amphibian

Japan has one godzilla of a seaplane

January 2003

Zoom climbs in the rocket-boosted NF-104 could top out at 120,000 feet in zero gravity.

Sky High in a Starfighter

My climb to the top in the F-104.

November 2002

Outback Scramjet

A University of Queensland lab has supersonic success.

November 2002

Commentary: Emergency Exit

Give the U.S. space program a mission that means something: saving the species.

November 2002

All That Remains

Old aircraft crash scenes are littered with story fragments.

November 2002

How Things Work: Supersonic Inlets

November 2002

Project 921

Russia and the United States have held the inside tracks in the space race. In the stretch, here comes China.

November 2002