All Stories

The renovation of the Museum’s Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall helped us uncover and rediscover interesting stories and facts. This is true of the Spirit of St. Louis, the aircraft that Charles Lindbergh famously piloted across the Atlantic.

In this video, created for the Smithsonian's TechQuest: Flying Circus alternate reality game, aerobatic champion Sean D. Tucker demonstrates how to perform tricks like a spin, an inside loop, and outside loop in his aircraft.

Bob Hoover passed away yesterday, after a lifetime of adventures rivaling any work of fact or fiction. Bob was an aviation legend, a role-model to generations of pilots, a friend to this Museum, and a gentleman to all who knew him. With the rest of the aviation community, we mourn the passing of the man Jimmy Doolittle called “the greatest stick and rudder man who ever lived.” In the coming days, people all over the world will celebrate his life by trading their favorite Bob Hoover stories. My favorite Bob Hoover story goes like this...

In 2005 Sikorsky began developing the X2 to increase helicopter speeds. The X2 made its first flight in 2008. On September 15, 2010, it achieved a level flight speed of 250 knots (463 kilometers/288 miles per hour)—a 15 percent improvement on the record top speed of a conventional helicopter. As a result, Sikorsky Aircraft and the X2 Technology Demonstrator Team received the Collier Trophy.

We have lost a great man and a legendary pilot. All the superlatives apply. For those not of the aviation world, it is hard to describe how much Robert A. “Bob” Hoover meant to us and how much he loved us in return.This biography will help explain his place in history but, most of all, day after day, Bob Hoover was a true gentleman.

When our collections staff moved the Nakajima Kikka, it provided an opportunity to bring visitors closer to the last known example of a World War II Japanese jet aircraft and the only Japanese jet to takeoff under its own power—it also opened up space in the Hangar so that our team could install netting to deter birds. 

The Museum is proud to have the Ilyushin Il-2 in its collections, as one of the few large artifacts in the Museum's possession associated with the Soviet Air Force in World War II. Once on exhibition, the plane will close a large void in the Museum’s presentation. But before the Shturmovik can enter the workshop, we have to learn as much as possible about the aircraft and its history.

Barely known in the West, the Il-2 Shturmovik played an essential role in defeating the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

Today in 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the U.S. nonstop. Earhart  piloted her Lockheed Vega 5B from Los Angeles to Newark in a record 19 hours and 5 minutes.

On this day in 1908, Wilbur Wright publicly demonstrated a Wright aircraft for the first time in Europe at the Hunaudières racecourse at Le Mans, southwest of Paris.