Civilian

Record-Setting Transcontinental Glider Flight

Record-Setting Transcontinental Glider Flight

After the Wright brothers’ first successful flights on December 17, 1903, it wasn’t long before adven­turous souls of both sexes began attempting to set distance and speed records. It was truly the golden age of barnstorming and of stunt flying. In 1911, for instance, Calbraith Perry Rodgers piloted the Vin Fiz, the first airplane to […]
A Canadian Staggerwing: Then & Now

A Canadian Staggerwing: Then & Now

The classic Beechcraft D17S Staggerwing first appeared in 1937 and was a follow-on design for Walter Beech of the original fixed gear Model 17 of the early 1930s. It was considered to be one of the finest and fastest aircraft of the time. It was expensive with prices quoted between $14,000 and $17,000 US dollars […]

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Super Stearman Saturday

Super Stearman Saturday

What do you get when you take any airplane and more than double its horsepower? For one thing you get much bigger grins every time you move the throttle forward for takeoff. The 450 Stearman, the so-called “Super Stearman,” is a classic case in point. Originally born with a puny 220 hp, W-670 Continental radial […]
DeHavilland Comet: Wooden Artistry

DeHavilland Comet: Wooden Artistry

In 1934 the public still viewed aviation as something special. In fact, air racing had become a worldwide obsession, which, like NASCAR many years later, offered great publicity opportunities for the sponsors and the participants. Australian millionaire Sir MacPherson Robertson, recognized the public relations value of air racing and announced he was sponsoring a race […]

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GeeBee R-1 and R-2: Air Racing with the World’s Fastest Pony Kegs:

GeeBee R-1 and R-2: Air Racing with the World’s Fastest Pony Kegs:

Today it’s impossible to think of the golden age of air racing without an R-1 or R-2 Gee Bee roaring across the mind’s eye. To the aviation public, the Gee Bees air racing — and vice versa. And that’ s only right. When Granville engineer, Pete Miller, drafted the first lines for the “R” series of […]
From England to Australia…in a Biplane

From England to Australia…in a Biplane

British pilot and speaker Tracey Curtis-Taylor is flying her 1942 Boeing Stearman biplane from England to Australia to honor aviation pioneer Amy Johnson, who made a similar flight in 1930. Curtis-Taylor won’t retrace Johnson’s 1930 route, which went through Iraq and Syria. She expects to spend three to four months on the journey, which started October 1 […]

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Howard Hughes

Howard Hughes

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 7, 1976) was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world. He gained prominence from the late 1920s as a maverick film producer, making big-budget and often controversial films like The Racket […]
Happy Birthday Beech Staggerwing

Happy Birthday Beech Staggerwing

At the height of the Great Depression, aircraft executive Walter H. Beech and airplane designer Ted A. Wells joined forces to collaborate on a project to produce a large, powerful, and fast cabin biplane built specifically for the business executive. The Beechcraft Model 17, popularly known as the “Staggerwing”, was first flown on November 4, […]

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Early Aeronautical Pioneer

Early Aeronautical Pioneer

Michael Holroyd Smith, a Victorian inventor and engineer, is best remembered for his pioneering work on developing Britain’s earliest street tramways. However, he was also interested in and contributed to the development of powered flight. He is known to have presented a lecture concerning the possibility of mechanically powered flight in 1879 and in 1910 […]
Land Now! 9/11 – An Anniversary Worth Remembering

Land Now! 9/11 – An Anniversary Worth Remembering

We at Flight Journal consider it to be an honor to present stories of those who were directly involved in the events of 9/11 as pilots or flight crew. This is yet another view of the event that has shaped our present and our future. “Our plane has been hijacked. Flight attendant #1 stabbed. Flight […]
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