All Stories

Historically, queer-identifying people in the U.S. military have been forced out or forced to hide who they are. It wasn’t until 2011 that gay, lesbian, and bisexual servicemembers could serve openly, and only in the last few years that trans servicemembers could serve at all. And while there’s still a ways to go, last year the Air Force and Space Force formed a working group specifically for LGBTQ+ issues.

Highlighting artifacts in storage. Grumman TBF-1 Avenger in Building 22 at Smithsonian Air and at Space Museum’s Paul E. Garber Facility in Hillcrest Heights, Maryland.

Brig. Gen. Charles E. McGee, the eldest of the surviving Tuskegee Airmen, passed away on January 16, 2022. His life of dedicated service included flying combat aircraft in three major wars—a feat that was unthinkable before his career began, when the US military banned African Americans from combat flying roles.

A century ago, the U.S. Navy commissioned the USS Langley—an ungainly new ship that would forever change military aviation.

A former Blackbird pilot now volunteers at the National Air and Space Museum.

Glenn Lane told his incredible survival story to former Museum curator Jim Zimbelman who met him at and an airport by chance in 2007—he was returning from a reunion event at Pearl Harbor with a jacket that displayed the words 'USS Arizona Survivor.’ Read about the man that survived two battleships bombings in less than one hour.

When World War II broke out, hundreds of women took to the skies in support of the war effort. 

"Thirty-six years flying fighters!” The Museum reflects on the life of one of the most highly regarded military pilots who passed away on July 24, 2021.

In the late fall of 1940, a troopship loaded with new pilots fresh out of primary flight school arrived in Vancouver, Canada. Porokoru Patapu “John” Pohe, first Māori trained as a pilot to serve in the Royal New Zealand Air Force, was amongst them. Captured as a prisoner of war, Pohe became involved with the plot for a mass escape from prison camp Stalag Luft III in Żagań, Poland. The 1963 epic film, “The Great Escape,” immortalized the event.

I had to hold back my emotions as I photographed the blue and gold F/A-18C Hornet aircraft approaching the Udvar-Hazy Center on November 18, 2020, by the realization that my photography career had, in some way, just come full circle. My journey began back in 1973 when I had the good fortune of being assigned as the photographer for the U.S. Navy Blue Angels Flight Demonstration Team.