All Stories

This summer, visitors had a unique opportunity to see the transformation of American commercial aviation on the floor of the Mary Engen Restoration Hangar: the Ford 5-AT Tri-Motor, the Boeing 247-D, and the Douglas DC-3

Since the earliest days of flight, air racing has been an exciting motorsports activity. We have in our collection many of the aircraft that made history by winning races and setting records, like Steve Wittman’s Special 20 Buster, which lived two lives in air racing and proved to be an inspiration for an entire class of air racers.

To the best of our knowledge, Flak-Bait is the only World War II bomber of its kind to retain the original insulating fabric panels lining the interior of the forward fuselage. To preserve the original fabric, we performed a number of innovative conservation treatments.

In honor of Fourth of July, we explore artifacts in our collection with American flags.

We explore Smithsonian aeronautics historian Paul Garber's list of thirteen most important aircraft of all time, circa the 1950s.

We explore the D-Day missions of the Museum's Martin B-26B-25-MA Marauder Flak-Bait.

In the early morning of June 6, 1944, thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen readied themselves for D-Day of Operation Overlord. For several divisions of American and British soldiers, the invasion had actually begun the night before on board Douglas C-47s.

The Martin B-26B Marauder Flak-Bait, an iconic artifact of World War II is undergoing artifact treatment in the Museum’s Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar. In this first in a series of blogs about the conservation of the aircraft, we explore the preservation of the doped fabric on the rudder.

Some of the world’s best pilots are the ones you hope never to see. In this episode, we’re talking about air rescue.

In this special episode recorded at SXSW, Emily, Matt, and Nick recount stories of failure and how they’ve inspired a whole lot of success in science and space exploration