Air & Space Magazine | Smithsonian Magazine

The 1903 Wright Flyer

Find out why the world's first controllable airplane was a bear to control.

March 2003

The Fleet

The Flyer's 18 powered cousins.

March 2003

The Original

How the 1903 Flyer got where it is today.

March 2003

Orville Wright (seated at right, with Wilbur) wears what’s known as “the Chevron,” a thick mustache that covers the top of the upper lip.
“He had sported a reddish mustache since high school,” writes Tom Crouch in his 2003 book The Bishop’s Boys. “Once full, almost a handlebar, it was now clipped short, just bushy enough to cover a pair of very thin lips that turned up at one corner when he smiled. He was the enthusiast of the pair, ever on fire with new inventions, and the optimist as well, the one who always saw the brighter side.”
There was a (small) outcry when Orville didn't make The Art of Manliness’ list of “35 Manliest Mustaches of All Time.” The father of aviation lost out to a puppet—the Swedish Chef from "the Muppet Show"—and a cartoon character, Yosemite Sam.

Meeting Wilbur and Orville

To understand the brothers, one historian found that what you know is less important than who you know.

March 2003

Miracle: A view of flight as it turns 100

Inventions seldom resemble the refined devices that evolve from them

March 2003

ShinMaywa’s US-1A, cleansed of the corrosive sea after every mission, continues an ancestral line of flying boats.

Giant Amphibian

Japan has one godzilla of a seaplane

January 2003

Winner Take All

All the nail biting, second guessing, and sheer engineering brilliance in the battle to build the better Joint Strike Fighter.

January 2003

Will the Air Force Finally Get a Spaceplane?

If Boeing's X-37 can maneuver politically as well as in space.

January 2003

Chalk's Ocean Airways

Since 1919, this little airline has managed to keep its head above water

January 2003

Seafarers

Bathing beauties from the time when aircraft first crossed oceans.

January 2003

CorsairFest

There's a lot more to the F4U than its past association with black sheep.

January 2003

Restoration: Going the Distance

The ninth life of a PBY-5A Cat.

January 2003

A structural test article of the Soviet Buran space shuttle, on display in Moscow in 2017.

White Elephant

How the Soviet Buran space shuttle helped the United States win the cold war.

January 2003

In Search of the Real Wright Flyer

Building a replica of the first airplane requires a certain resourcefulness. Anybody got any horsehide glue?

January 2003

Moments and Milestones: Airfairs

November 2002

Sergei Rachmaninoff (center) was instrumental in getting the Sikorsky S-29A airliner off the ground. Igor Sikorsky (left) had labored with Baron Nicholas Solovioff (right) and a dwindling workforce to launch the 14-passenger transport.

Oldies and Oddities: Sikorsky's Piano Man

November 2002

The author surveys the forbidding Laotian terrain from a C-46.

Above & Beyond: Ration of Luck

November 2002

In 1957 midshipmen launched an N3N from the Severn River in Annapolis.

In the Museum: Sailors' Delight

November 2002

A live-fire test on a North American F-86. During the Vietnam War, engineers looked for ways to toughen aircraft against ground fire and surface-to-air missiles.

Shoot 'Em Up

Sometimes you have to destroy the aircraft in order to save it.

November 2002

In 1964, a trio of RA-5Cs had central Florida covered.

Restoration: Mach 2 Heavyweight Champion

The North American RA-5C Vigilante.

November 2002