All Stories

Historian Thomas Paone explores the important role played by K-ships in hunting German U-Boats during World War II.

Curator Laurence Burke looks back on the extensive career of Navy pilot Edward L. “Whitey” Feightner

The Tuskegee Airmen’s fight for equality involved more than their skills in the air. It required coordinated, collective actions of civil disobedience in which 162 officers risked their careers and their lives to stand up against systemic racism in the US Army Air Forces (AAF).

Aeronautics curator Dorothy Cochrane explores the history of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) and their fight for recognition for their contributions to World War II.

Curator Michael Hankins examines the history of the World War II fighter plane P-38 Lightning and its connections with the fan-favorite SR-71 Blackbird.

Naval aviation curator Laurence Burke explores a lesser known type of naval aviation — spotter planes, a role mainly filled by Vought OS2U Kingfishers.

Few American fighter pilots on their own survived a turning, twisting, close-in dogfight against a capable Japanese pilot flying a Mitsubishi A6M Zero during World War II. Curator Russell Lee explores in a new blog.

Before Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon and before he flew on Gemini 8, he was a NASA test pilot. Noted for his engineering excellence and technical capability as a pilot, Armstrong became one of only 12 pilots to fly the ultimate experimental aircraft – the North American X-15.

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.

May 2, 2019, marks the United States’ Days of Remembrance, the nation’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust.  Today the National Air and Space Museum remembers Dezsö Becker, a Hungarian aviator who served in World War I and died in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in January 1945.