Immortal Pilots

If there was a single, seismic event that propelled Chuck Yeager to fame, for Robert A. Hoover, universally known as “Bob,” there were a thousand small tremors. As Yeager’s backup and the number two option to go supersonic, Hoover was on the doorstep to Yeager-like fame, but that’s not the way it went down.  As […]

When people learn about Chuck Yeager, many folks assume that when he became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound, in October of 1947 in the high desert of southern California, the presses worldwide must have been stopped. Ticker-tape parades and speaking tours surely followed. But nothing of the sort happened. […]

Amelia Earhart is arguably the most compelling figure in the history of aviation, and only a part of that is because she died young or, rather, she disappeared. James Dean and Sam Cooke left us too soon, but Amelia vanished, leaving us with great sadness and, in some cases, the faint hope that she might […]

The first person to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic was many things—a pilot first and foremost, I’d argue, but running a close second was his skill as a promoter. Charles Lindbergh became famous as an aviator because he wanted fame, and he took the big risk. It paid off. It’s seldom in history […]

There’s something deeply inspirational about people who don’t step into success from the top rung of the ladder but who start from a position that everyone, or just about everyone, tells them is hopeless. For Coleman, the odds were beyond stacked. Born in Texas in 1892, Coleman grew up in a family of sharecroppers. Her […]