All Stories

As an intern with the Aeronautics Department I had the chance to review and scan hundreds of color images from WWII. What particularly drew my attention were the images of women who served in the Navy’s reserve force, since at the time they were not allowed to serve their country through military enlistment to the same extent as men.

Step outside of the Air and Space Museum and into the Lyle Tuttle Tattoo Art Collection in San Francisco, California to explore the symbolism of tattoo body art during World War II.

On August 18, 2020, the United States celebrates the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which declared that the right to vote "shall not be denied...on account of sex." Several collections in the National Air and Space Museum Archives provide short stories along the long path of the women’s suffrage movement and the 19th Amendment.

Curator of U.S. Air Force History Mike Hankins looks at the post-World War II careers of three Air Force aces.

Curator Alex Spencer tells the story of Felice Figus.

Alverna Babbs challenged the Civil Aeronautics Administration in 1944 for a waiver to earn her student pilot’s license. The CAA was reluctant due to Babb’s disability—a double leg amputation at the age of 13 months. With her own persistence and the assistance of Roscoe Turner, Babbs earned her waiver and her full pilot’s license in 1946, the first person with a disability to do so (as documented in the previous blog in this series celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act). After remarrying and having children, Alverna Williams took a 30 year hiatus from flying. She returned to aviation in the 1970s, determined once again to take her place in the sky. 

Thirty years ago, on July 26, 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act came into effect. This important civil rights law prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public. Forty-six years earlier, without the protection of law and its accommodations, Alverna Babbs, who had lost both legs as a child, fought to receive a waiver for her student license. When she succeeded, she became the first American pilot with disabilities to earn a pilot’s license.

Curator Margaret Weitekamps shares a new artifact to join our collection: the Congressional Space Medal of Honor awarded to astronaut Neil Armstrong.

National Air and Space Museum fellow Caroline Johnson remembers the pioneering life of Emily Howell Warner.

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