Photo Gallery: National Air and Space Museum

Civil War Spy

Photograph courtesy Library of Congress

Balloonist Thaddeus Lowe goes aloft aboard the Intrepid to observe Confederate activity during the Civil War Battle of Fair Oaks, which took place in Virginia from May 31 to June 1, 1862.

Man-Carrying Kite

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

John McCurdy pilots Alexander Graham Bell's experimental tetrahedral kite, the Cygnet III, which left the ground via powered flight in March 1912.

Lilienthal Glider

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

Otto Lilienthal soars above a crowd in one of his manned gliders in an 1893 photograph. The German aeronautical pioneer, nicknamed "the flying man," died after a glider crash in August 1896.

Aeronautics Workshop

Photograph courtesy National Air and Space Museum

Samuel Langley's flying machine the Great Aerodrome was built, piece by piece, in this workshop on the second floor of the Smithsonian's South Shed (behind the Smithsonian Institution Building), as seen in a picture taken January 31, 1900.

Land and Sea

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

A man helps a young boy balance on the pontoon of a Sikorsky S-38 amphibious aircraft in the 1930s.

Record-Breaking Raider

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle—the first U.S. pilot to fly coast to coast with just one fuel stop—stands in front of his de Haviland DH-4 airplane near San Antonio, Texas, in September 1922.

Traveling Nonstop

Photograph courtesy National Air and Space Museum

The Fokker T-2 airplane is seen flying east to west over the U.S. countryside during the first nonstop flight across North America in 1923.

Spirited Sale

Photograph courtesy NASM Archives

Spirit of St. Louis, the plane in which Charles Lindbergh made the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight, was installed in the North Hall of the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building in 1928. The Smithsonian bought the history-making plane from Lindbergh for one U.S. dollar.

Bombshells

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

The Aquabelles—synchronized-swimmers featured at the New York World's Fair of 1939—stand with officers of the U.S. Army Air Corps atop one of Boeing's experimental XB-15 bombers.

Target Kite

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

Paul Garber, founder of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, stands with a kite marked with the distinctive shape of a Japanese Zero fighter in the early 1940s. Garber designed such kites for shipborne and aircraft target practice during World War II.

Rocket Man

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

Physicist Robert Goddard, rocketry pioneer, stands next to one of his experimental A-series rockets in front of his workshop in Roswell, New Mexico, in the 1930s.

Let's Do Lunch

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, seminars on aerospace history held at the National Air Museum—as it was then called—opened with the ceremonial placement of this lunchbox on the table.

Rocket Row

Photograph courtesy National Air and Space Museum

Three U.S. military rockets—left to right, the Army's Jupiter-C satellite launcher; the Navy's Vanguard satellite launcher; and the Navy's Polaris A-3 missile—stood on display outside the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building in the early 1960s.

Faster Than Sound

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

Captain Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager poses in the cockpit of the Bell X-1 in May 1948 at Muroc Air Force Base in California. On October 14, 1947, Yeager broke the sound barrier in this plane, nicknamed "Glamorous Glennis." The craft joined the Smithsonian's collection in 1950.

Space Race

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

Schoolchildren line up to see inside the Freedom 7 capsule, in which Navy Cdr. Alan B. Shepard, Jr., became the first U.S. astronaut in space in 1961. The capsule joined the Smithsonian's collection just six months after Shepard's historic flight.

Under Construction

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

A view of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., shows construction of the current National Air and Space Museum building underway in December 1972.

Preserving the Past

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

For decades the restoration of aircraft and spacecraft in the museum's collection—such as the Hawker Hurricane (left) and Nieuport 28 planes seen in the foreground—took place at the museum's Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility in Suitland, Maryland, (pictured). In 2010 the collection moved to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles, Virginia.

Stealthy

Photograph courtesy Smithsonian Institution

When the U.S. Air Force retired most of its SR-71 Blackbirds in the early 1990s, No. 972 (pictured) was transferred to the National Air and Space Museum for eventual display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

Layered Exhibits

Photograph courtesy National Air and Space Museum

William "Jake" Jacobs, the museum's chief exhibits designer, uses Plexiglas cutouts to represent aircraft on a floor plan for the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center's main exhibit hangar. By the time the center opened in December 2003, all the museum's layout plans had been computerized.

Get more aeronautics photos and facts in the National Geographic book National Air and Space Museum: An Autobiography >>