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As the curator for the Museum’s Martin B-26B Marauder, I’ve become obsessed with the proper way to designate the name given to it by its first pilot Jim Farrell in August 1943. It all centers on the pesky use of a hyphen. Is it Flak Bait or Flak-Bait? 

I met Eric Brown in April 2013 at the Royal Air Force Club in Piccadilly, London. Enthusiastically, he had agreed to this meeting to answer my research questions. The first thing I noticed was how agile and slim he looked—barely 5 ft. 7 in. tall, he had the figure of a much younger man and walked the stairs up to the restaurant with the elegance and energy of a man much younger than the 94-year-old man he was at that time. While listening to him, I was aware that I talked to a true legend: the experimental test pilot who had flown 487 different types of aircraft, more than any pilot in history, and the British Royal Navy officer who had landed more aircraft on carriers than anybody else in the world, a total of 2,407 landings, among them even jet-propelled aircraft.

The Allied Victory in World War II was one of cooperation, not just on the battlefield, but in the laboratory. Microwave radar, jet propulsion, gyroscopic gunsights, and even penicillin were key innovations critical to American military success.

The Museum’s annual Air & Scare event is taking place this Saturday at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. In the spirit of disguises, costumes, and just plain scary stuff, I thought I would share some examples from the history of military aviation where things were not as they seemed.

In this four-part series, curators Russ Lee and Evelyn Crellin take an in-depth look at the Lippisch DM 1, an experimental German glider. At the conclusion of Part 3, the glider was tested in the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) Full-Scale Wind Tunnel. In this final post, Russ and Evelyn connect those early tests with the world's first delta wing aircraft.  We have found no written confirmation that Convair incorporated the NACA data from the DM 1 directly into their groundbreaking work to design and build the first jet-propelled delta wing aircraft.

In this four-part series, curators Russ Lee and Evelyn Crellin take an in-depth look at the Lippisch DM 1, an experimental German glider. At the conclusion of Part 2, U.S. Army General George S. Patton ordered the students to resume construction of the glider at the Prien Airport. A number of American visitors arrived to witness the construction of the DM 1, including the famous American pioneer of aerodynamics Walter Stuart Diehl.

In this four-part series, curators Russ Lee and Evelyn Crellin take an in-depth look at the Lippisch DM 1, an experimental German glider. At the conclusion of Part 1, construction of the glider had begun in August 1944 by students of the Flugtechnische Fachgruppe (FFG). Construction of the experimental glider was derailed dramatically on September 11 and 12, 1944, when Allied bombers struck Darmstadt, including the building that housed the FFG D 33 project.

As summer heats up in Washington, DC, swimming pool attendance skyrockets. For Women Air Service Pilots (WASPs) training to fly military aircraft during World War II at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, a dip in the pool was more than fun and games. For any pilot, there exists the possibility of an aircraft going down over water. To prepare, WASPs without any swimming abilities were enrolled in a regular swimming class.

In this four-part series, curators Russ Lee and Evelyn Crellin take an in-depth look at the Lippisch DM 1, an experimental German glider.

Russian naval pilot Alexander de Seversky, that country’s top naval ace in World War I, later became one of the most influential proponents of the use of strategic air power in warfare — and Disney film star — in the United States.