For 34 consecutive days, we celebrated the greatest fighter aces in history — from Adolphe Pégoud, the Frenchman who invented aerial combat, to M.M. Alam, the Pakistani ace who downed five aircraft in under a minute. If you missed any of those posts, they live permanently in our History & Legends section.
Today, we turn a new page. Same sense of wonder, different breed of pilot. Our new daily series — Outstanding Aviators in History — celebrates the men and women who didn’t just fly in combat, but reshaped what flight itself meant. Inventors who worked with wood and wire. Record-breakers who flew solo across oceans. Test pilots who strapped into aircraft that had never left the ground. Aviators who broke down barriers of race, gender, altitude, and sound.
What to Expect
Every day at 8:00 AM, a new post drops — one aviator, one story, told the way it deserves to be told. Not a dry biography. Not a Wikipedia summary. A vivid account of what they did, why it was insane, why it mattered, and what it felt like to be there.
Over the coming weeks you’ll meet the bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio who spent four years proving the impossible. The French journalist who crossed the English Channel in a monoplane cobbled together from piano wire. The woman who was refused flying lessons in America — so she sailed to France and earned her licence there. The Boeing test pilot who silently decided to roll a passenger jet prototype in front of 200,000 spectators without telling anyone. And the amateur cyclist who pedalled his way across the Channel on nothing but determination and cramped legs.
Coming Up in the Series
Here’s a preview of who’s coming — in chronological order of their greatest achievement:
The Outstanding Aviators Series — Coming Daily
| 6 May | Wilbur & Orville Wright — 12 seconds at Kitty Hawk |
| 7 May | Louis Blériot — first monoplane crossing of the English Channel |
| 8 May | Charles Lindbergh — 33.5 hours alone over the Atlantic |
| 9 May | Harriet Quimby — America’s first female pilot, first woman across the Channel |
| 10 May | Bessie Coleman — refused lessons in America, went to France to earn her wings |
| 11 May | Amelia Earhart — first woman to fly the Atlantic solo |
| 12 May | Florence ‘Pancho’ Barnes — first female stunt pilot, holder of the women’s speed record |
| 13 May | Jacqueline Cochran — founded the WASPs, first woman to break the sound barrier |
| 14 May | Jacqueline Auriol — France’s supersonic test pilot who broke the barrier four times |
| 15 May | Jimmy Doolittle — flew blind, then bombed Tokyo |
| 16 May | Glenn Curtiss — the man who beat the Wright Brothers in court and in the air |
| 17 May | Billy Mitchell — sunk a battleship with bombers, was court-martialed, then vindicated |
| 18 May | Howard Hughes — billionaire, recluse, and the fastest man alive |
| 19 May | Bob Hoover — Chuck Yeager called him the greatest stick-and-rudder man alive |
| 20 May | Tony LeVier — Skunk Works test pilot who first flew the U-2 and F-104 |
| 21 May | Tex Johnston — secretly rolled the Boeing 707 prototype over 200,000 spectators |
| 22 May | Neil Armstrong — flew the X-15 to the edge of space, then walked on the Moon |
| 23 May | Eric “Winkle” Brown — flew 487 aircraft types and made 2,407 carrier landings |
| 24 May | Noel Wien — the man who brought airlines to Alaska by biplane |
| 25 May | Max Conrad — the Flying Grandfather who crossed oceans alone in a light aircraft |
| 26 May | Bryan Allen — pedalled a human-powered aircraft across the English Channel |
Each story is told in full — with historical images, key facts, unforgettable quotes, and where possible, footage you can watch. Bookmark this series. Share the ones that blow your mind. And check back tomorrow for the flight that started everything.
“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space.”
— Wilbur Wright, 1900 — the Wright Brothers story begins tomorrowAt MiGFlug, we offer ordinary people the chance to fly in real fighter jets — the L-39 Albatros, the MiG-29, and more. It’s our way of honouring the same spirit that drove every pilot in this series. The need to feel the sky. Find your flight here.
English
0 Comments