Aviation History

The first swept-wing airplane in the U.S. fighter inventory, the F-86 scored consistent victories over Russian-built MiG fighters during the Korean War, accounting for a final ratio of 10-to-1. […]

In the second half of the 20th century, the aircraft carrier became a symbol of the United States’ position as a superpower. […]

James “Jimmie” Doolittle is today most famous for his audacious B-25 bombing raid on Tokyo in the opening months of America’s entry into World War II, an attack featured in the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor. […]

In 1940, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of Japan’s Imperial Navy informed his government that if Japan went to war, he would “guarantee to put up a tough fight for the first six months, but I have absolutely no confidence as to what might happen if it went on for two or three years.” […]

As pilot of one of the most famous flights of WW II, which brought about a quicker surrender from the enemy and a reduction in the loss of Allied lives, and for his leadership and skill with both airplanes and people in times of stress, Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. is enshrined with honor into the National Aviation Hall of Fame […]

Humanity has been using rockets in warfare since the Chinese discovered gunpowder late in the first millennium. […]

NASA made aviation history with the first and second successful flights of a scramjet-powered airplane at hypersonic speeds – speeds greater than Mach 5 or five times the speed of sound. […]

The B-17 Flying Fortress is one of the most famous airplanes ever built. […]

It takes thousands of people and thousands of man-hours to build a new type airplane, but the flight test and certification is where the rubber meets the road. […]

Perhaps the best way to define general aviation is to begin by listing what it is not. General aviation is not military aviation and it is not scheduled commercial aviation. To a great extent, all other uses of aviation in the United States fall into the category of general aviation. […]