All Stories

It's a bird? It's a plane? Its a guy pretending to be a bird?? We have a very odd aircraft in the collection. 

When the K-III’s designer James Vernon Martin offered the diminutive aircraft to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum in 1924, he presented it as “the first aeroplane in the entire world to incorporate the retractable chassis.”  The aircraft is a one-of-kind, experimental World War I era single-seat scout biplane.

These days, it takes seven hours to fly from New York to London, compared to under three hours flying at twice the speed of sound on the Concorde. When I started my internship at the National Air and Space Museum, I was determined to learn why.  

On July 31, 1964, Al Parker flew from Odessa, Texas, to Kimball, Nebraska, in the Sisu sailplane, which is on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. It was the first time anyone had flown a motorless aircraft more than 621 miles nonstop.

Maj. Gen. Joe Engle's experiences as a test pilot of both the X-15 aircraft and Space Shuttle orbiters Enterprise, Columbia, and Discovery made him the first person to ever fly two winged vehicles to space, amongst his many noteworthy achievements. The Museum was most honored to host him as the earliest Space Shuttle commander to attend the arrival ceremony of Discovery at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in 2012.

It was envisioned that an entire squadron of rigid airships could act as a scouting fleet from 15,000 feet in the air, visually covering thousands of square miles each day. If each of those airships were able to launch and retrieve their own scouting airplanes, that range could be increased exponentially, far more than any naval vessel was capable of. They were essentially creating a flying aircraft carrier. 

Amanda Lee is the first woman to fly jet formations as a Blue Angel.

The history of how flying boats opened up travel destinations around the world then they went to war.

Pulling back the curtain on artifacts in storage. For this issue, we feature the Boeing X-45A UAV.

What's new in Aviation and Space