This Bede BD-4 at the 1991 EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh joined the hundreds built from an $1,800 kit introduced by Jim Bede in 1970.

Homebuilt Airplanes

Lieutenant John Payne mailed this publicity photo of himself posing in the cockpit of a Republic P-47D home to his grandfather.

In the Service

A Marine Corps Reserve UH-1Y makes ready to deploy troops as part of a poor-weather training exercise at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in January 2017.

Heavy Weather

A beautifully restored Howard DGA built in 1943 cruises over Middletown Valley in western Maryland.

Aerospace Firsts

Why do we fly? Maybe just for the feeling that Ryan Mohr must have had as he flew Tony Phillippi's perfect Grumman Albatross seaplane over Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota on a perfect 2014 fall day.

Taking Flight

Eleanor Roosevelt (right), shown on a 1933 flight with her friend Amelia Earhart, admired the courage of women pilots, and aimed to become one herself, but her husband objected on the grounds that it was too dangerous. When Earhart disappeared in 1937, Eleanor wrote her daughter Anna: “Heard about Amelia over the radio and felt even lower…I do like her and I’ll miss seeing her if she’s gone but perhaps she’d rather go that way.”

The Search for Amelia Earhart

10 days, 48 airplanes, 250,000 square miles of ocean.

The year before her flight to England, Lores Bonney (in foreground at right) flew solo around Australia. She flew the same open-cockpit de Havilland Gipsy Moth on both flights. She told this story to the author several years before her death in 1994 at the age of 96.

Australia to England, Alone

Maude “Lores” Bonney flew halfway around the world just a few years after Lindbergh’s celebrated solo flight.

A 1927 photo of Frank Clark, who offered $20 for Phillips’ flight and piloted the first rescue attempt.

Wingwalker to the Rescue

Air-to-air rapid repair.

In the skies above Iraq in 2017, a KC-135 Stratotanker pumps gas into a B-52 Stratofortress. KC-135s and B-52s have hooked up for more than 60 years.

Eyewitness: Inflight Refueling

Alongside the Boomer for one of military aviation’s most critical maneuvers.

After its final flight across the Atlantic, in June 2003, Air France Concorde F-BVFA lands at Washington Dulles International. The airplane is on view today at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near the airport.

Mach 2 on the Concorde

Flying at twice the speed of sound was only part of the great airliner’s allure.

Before the Hindenburg disaster brought the airship era to a close, travelers experienced a degree of luxury and comfort today’s airline passengers would envy. Then again, an Atlantic crossing took three days.

Across the Atlantic on the Hindenburg

“Europe to America in under 60 hours—incredible!”

The Skye Ryder powered parachute comes as a kit for assembly. A 50-horsepower engine is standard, as is the feeling of freedom experienced when flying it.

Riding the Sky Over Montana

The urge to defy gravity takes many forms.

The Rutan VariEze, on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Northern Virginia, electrified homebuilders when it appeared in 1976, not only with its exotic airframe but also with a set of easy-to-follow plans, which are on display in the We All Fly gallery.

Comfortable in the Air

How humans learned to fly.

Ingenuity’s team celebrates the news that the helicopter completed its first flight on April 19. Håvard Grip is in the foreground.

The First Martian Pilot Tells What It’s Like to Fly on Another World

Ingenuity’s operator describes the helicopter’s historic first flight

Meeting troops at Greenham Common Airfield in England on the eve of D-Day, Eisenhower kept the conversation light. They talked about face paint (a mix of cocoa and cottonseed oil), civilian life, and fishing in Saginaw, Michigan.

Ike Learns to Fly

How Dwight D. Eisenhower got his ticket punched.

A Dyke Delta soars above the Florida Gulf Coast. The creation of John Dyke (opposite, at Oshkosh in 2019), the airplane was inspired by a German engineer’s bold designs of tailless aircraft in the 1920s and ’30s.

Some Homebuilt Airplanes Create a Movement. This One Created a Family.

John Dyke knew exactly the kind of airplane he wanted. Turns out dozens of pilots wanted the same thing.

Even in the nose section of a Martin B-26B Marauder, an airman could take a drag. The nose gunner of the B-26 Fightin' Cock, based in the U.K. with the 9th Air Force, smokes during a mission.

Aboard World War II Airplanes, It Was Strictly Smoking Allowed

Marlboro Country reached all the way up to 40,000 feet.

On a British European Airways Vickers Viscount airliner in the mid-1950s, passengers were served drinks and dinner—and smoked cigarettes—in “Pullman-style” comfort, unencumbered by seat belts. The debate over the use of the restraints continued into the 1960s.

How the Airline Industry Got Wise to Seat Belts

The complex history of a simple safety device.

An artist’s rendition of the Thomas W. Haas We All Fly gallery, which reveals the many pursuits in general aviation, features airshow star Sean D. Tucker’s aircraft.

A New Gallery Celebrates the Variety That Is General Aviation

From private pilots to aerobatic racers.

King in the cockpit of a rare 1930 Waco, which he ferried from Wisconsin to California.

The Barnstormer

It’s one of the oldest professions in aviation, and it requires more than flying skill.

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