"The Dinosaur with Good Proportions: The Origin Story of the P-47 Thunderbolt"
June 12, 2026 — A Georgian engineer's relentless redesigns, a corporate boardroom coup, the physics of a turbosupercharger and forty-three feet of ductwork, and the Army's demand for an aircraft that could do everything produced the largest, heaviest, and most produced American fighter of the wartime production years.
"Bent Wings and Whistling Death: The Origin Story of the F4U Corsair"
May 31, 2026 — "How a Navy requirement for pure speed produced an airplane too dangerous to land on a carrier, how the Marines turned that flaw into a legend over the jungles of Guadalcanal, and how a propeller-driven fighter designed in 1938 was still killing enemies thirty-one years later."
"Born in 102 Days: The Origin Story of the P-51 Mustang"
May 27, 2026 — "How a California aircraft company's refusal to build someone else's airplane, a self-taught designer's long-suppressed ambition, a Rolls-Royce test pilot's afternoon flight, and a polo champion's stubborn advocacy produced the fighter that changed the air war over Europe."
The Twin Beech: Everywhere, Always, Doing Everything
May 19, 2026 — Built for feeder airlines that barely existed, it trained 90% of America's WWII bombardiers and navigators, flew covert CIA missions in Southeast Asia, hauled freight across Alaska, and appeared in more roles in more places than any other aircraft in history. It was in production for 32 years. The last one went to Japan Airlines.
The Younkins — A Family Built for the Sky
May 19, 2026 — Three generations of a Northwest Arkansas family who gave everything to aviation. An engineer who reinvented how aircraft navigate. A son who did aerobatics in a cargo plane and a corporate jet. A daughter who walked on wings. A grandson who still flies the same airplane his father died loving. This is their story.
FIFI — The Last Superfortress
May 18, 2026 — The most expensive aircraft program in history. The bomber that burned Japan's cities and ended the Second World War. Of the 3,970 built, two are still flying. This is the story of the B-29 Superfortress, and FIFI the one that was left in the desert to be shot at before anyone thought to save her.
Bureau 133722 — The Last Corsair and Three Wars It Could Not Win
May 13, 2026 — Built in December 1952 as one of the last 94 Corsairs ever made, bureau 133722 flew combat in Indo-China, the Suez Crisis, and the Algerian War — and lost all three. Then it crossed the Atlantic, landed in Oregon, and found its second act.
Bureau 17799 — The Life of the World's Oldest Flying Corsair
May 13, 2026 — Delivered on August 31, 1943. Pacific combat veteran. MGM movie prop. Rescued, restored, and still flying. The story of the world's oldest airworthy F4U Corsair and the people connected to it across more than eighty years.
"The F/A-18 Hornet: Born From a Losing Bid, Built Into a Legend"
May 13, 2026 — It lost the Air Force competition. The Navy's own admirals fought against it. Congress cancelled the program that spawned it. The aircraft that emerged anyway went on to become the backbone of American carrier aviation for four decades and counting.
Ferrill Purdy — The Pilot, the Lamp, and the Corsair
May 13, 2026 — He flew Corsairs over the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, was ordered to turn around near Nagasaki, was shot down twice, earned five air medals, and then spent 38 years teaching pharmacology. In 2014, at the age of 92, he walked into a lamp repair shop wearing a Corsair cap. That was when his story finally got told.
Jackie Cochran — From the Cotton Mill to the Sound Barrier
May 13, 2026 — She married at 14, lost her son at 5, reinvented herself completely, learned to fly on a $495 bet, became a test pilot, won the Bendix Race, founded and commanded the WASP, designed the first oxygen mask, broke the sound barrier when the US Air Force would not give her a jet, and held more aviation records than any pilot in history. She called her life a journey from sawdust to stardust. This is the full story.
Jesse Brown — The First African American Naval Aviator
May 13, 2026 — Every obstacle a segregated system could put in front of him, he faced and overcame. On October 21, 1948, Jesse Brown became the first African American to earn the United States Navy's wings of gold.
John Tashjian — Two Days After Pearl Harbor
May 13, 2026 — The son of Armenian immigrants, he enlisted two days after Pearl Harbor, saved a fellow pilot over the Pacific, served twenty years with the Oakland Fire Department, spent decades photographing reptiles and amphibians for the world's major zoos, and on his 100th birthday flew the same Corsair he had flown in combat 77 years earlier. He was always smiling.
Robert Hampton Gray — The Last Victoria Cross
May 13, 2026 — The son of a Boer War veteran and jeweller from Nelson, British Columbia, Robert Hampton Gray flew Hawker Hurricanes in East Africa, attacked the German battleship Tirpitz in a Norwegian fjord, and then took the fight to the Japanese Navy in the Pacific. This is his story.
Hazel Ying Lee — The First Chinese American Woman to Fly for the United States
May 12, 2026 — She saved elevator tips to learn to fly, applied to two military air forces and was turned down by both, escaped Japanese bombs over Canton, married a Chinese Air Force pilot, and became the first Chinese American woman to fly for the United States military — only to be denied a military funeral and burial in a white cemetery. Her name means Hero. She earned it.
This is Pretty Polly a P-63 King Cobra
May 12, 2026 — One of only four airworthy examples left in the world. Most people walk right past it without knowing what they are looking at.