Do You Recognize These Famous Planes?

The Wright Brothers — the aviation pioneers behind the first successful airplane flight — were airborne for 12 seconds during their historic first flight in 1903. The iconic Wright Flyer made it 120 feet before dipping back into the North Carolina sand dunes. The plane was flown by Orville Wright and was the brothers’ second attempt to achieve liftoff.

The F-16 combat plane has been an Air Force staple since 1978, coinciding with the airing of the classic sci-fi television drama “Battlestar Galactica.” (The series was remade in 2004.) The original pilots must have been big fans, because the officially named Fighting Falcon was quickly nicknamed “Viper,” after the fighter planes in the TV show.

On January 14, 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt secretly flew from Florida to Morocco to attend a World War II strategy conference with Winston Churchill, the first trip of its kind by a sitting President. The journey took place aboard a Boeing 314 Clipper Flying Boat named the Dixie Clipper and lasted four days, with the plane stopping several times for refueling and rest.

Named after 19th-century sailing vessels, Pan Am’s flying boats were used to conquer long-distance travel to hard-to-reach places. Essentially flying hotels, the luxurious clippers were designed so their massive buoyant hulls were beneath their wings. This allowed the planes to act like a large pontoon, facilitating water landings and take-offs, which was essential to opening travel to remote destinations without proper runways.

Able to fly across the Atlantic in about three hours, the supersonic Concorde jet was a revolutionary plane for its time. The airliner first flew in 1969, but only 14 ever entered service, and with just two airlines: Air France and British Airways, flying from New York to Paris and London, respectively. Citing high costs, the airlines retired the plane in 2003.

Piloted by Louis Blériot, the Blériot Type XI was a 25-horsepower monoplane that was up to the challenge of the day. The “London Daily Mail” had put up a £1,000 prize for the first airplane flight across the Channel, and the French aviator thought he could make it. Airborne for 36 minutes and 30 seconds, the Blériot XI encountered rain and turbulence but landed safely on the other side of the Channel, becoming the first plane ever to do so.

Amelia Earhart set two of her most famous aviation records while piloting a bright-red Lockheed 5B Vega. The first was when she flew it alone across the Atlantic Ocean in May 1932; the second was when she became the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the U.S. Built for speed with cantilever wings and a streamlined design, Vegas were highly prized as record-setting aircraft. Earhart nicknamed hers "Little Red Bus."

In October 1967, Major William J. Knight took to the skies in the experimental X-15 research aircraft and flew faster than any airplane pilot had flown before — or has flown since. The rocket-powered vehicle reached a top speed of 4,520 miles per hour, more than six times the speed of sound. The X-15 was retired shortly after, and no manned aircraft has approached such speeds again.

In 1956, the Goodyear Aircraft Corporation (an offshoot of the tire and rubber company) designed and built its first Inflatoplane in just 12 weeks. The machine was made largely out of a brand-new rubberized fabric that gave it one of the highest strength-to-weight ratios of any material at the time. The plane was intended to be used by the military for reconnaissance missions — and as the name suggests, it was inflatable.

Technically, any Air Force aircraft carrying the U.S. President flies with the call sign Air Force One, but in practice there are a few specific planes that are generally referred to by that name. These include two Boeing 747-200B aircraft that are specially designed for transporting the commander-in-chief, both equipped with an office, a conference room, and even a medical suite that can function as an operating room.

During the Space Shuttle program, NASA used modified Boeing 747s — called “NASA 905” and “NASA 911” — to ferry the Space Shuttle between launch and landing sites as well as other locations, including European Air Shows. Once the shuttle program ended in 2011, a NASA 905 carried the now-retired spacecraft to separate museums throughout the country.

Aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright invented and flew the first modern airplane, known as the Wright Flyer. Strapped to the aircraft, Orville first took to the skies over Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The advancement of engines and aerodynamics finally made it possible to fly heavier-than-air planes, and the world was never the same again.

Jointly created by the British and French, the Concorde made its inaugural flight in 1969 and became the first commercial supersonic jet, providing flights across the Atlantic Ocean in under three hours. But it didn’t last. The Concorde consumed 6,771 gallons of fuel on one flight, and it couldn’t fly over land due to destructive shockwaves. Today, scientists are still working on ways to overcome these obstacles.

Piloted by one of the most famous pilots of all time, Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager, the Bell X-1 became the first plane to achieve supersonic flight. Powered by a flame-spewing rocket engine, the plane didn’t experience a normal take-off, but was instead dropped from the bombay of a B-29. After achieving this world record, Yeager renamed the plane “Glamorous Glennis” after his wife.

Wanting to keep tabs on the Soviet Union’s nuclear capability, the U.S. developed a high-altitude spy plane to conduct overflights of its adversary’s territory. Because it flew so high, the plane was thought to be undetectable, but that reality came crashing down on May 1, 1960. U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers was captured, but in February 1962, he returned to the U.S. in a prisoner exchange.

In 1942, amid World War II, the U.S. needed to transport millions of tons of material across the Atlantic Ocean. But metals were hard to come by, so the U.S. began looking for other options. The task eventually fell to eccentric business magnate and aviator Howard Hughes to design a wooden plane six times larger than any other at the time. On November 2, 1947, the Spruce Goose made its first and only flight, with Hughes in the pilot seat.

Some scenes in “Top Gun” were filmed in an actual F-14 Tomcat with actor Tom Cruise in the backseat. But when Cruise first flew in an F-14 with pilot Lloyd “Bozo” Abel, the intense flying made him vomit. When Cruise asked why his pilot didn’t warn him, he responded, “They don’t call me 'Bozo' for nothing.” “Top Gun” ended up being so successful that the U.S. Navy saw a recruitment surge.

Between July 10 and October 31, 1940, Germany unleashed a torrent of fighter planes toward the British Isles to try to knock the U.K. out of World War II. What stood between Britain and defeat was the Royal Air Force and its prized plane, the Spitfire. During the battle, Spitfires shot down more than 500 German planes while losing half as many. The plane became a symbol of British resistance.

After leaving New York on May 20, 1927, the Spirit of St. Louis arrived in Paris 33 hours later. It was a plane unlike any other. Although it looked metal, it was actually covered by a silver-colored fabric, and for safety, the fuel tanks were placed in the front, making it impossible to see straight ahead without a periscope. The plane was also hard to fly by design, so Lindbergh wouldn’t fall asleep.

In the early years of aviation, biplanes ruled the skies. Named after their two-tiered wing structure, biplanes came into prominence in the late 19th century, after several successful gliders used the design. The Wright Flyer cemented the biplane’s popularity, and that adoration remained until the mid-1930s, when newer materials and more powerful engines made monoplanes the future of flight.

The Wright brothers were pioneers in the field of aviation, and they successfully completed the first powered flight with a human pilot aboard their eponymous Wright Flyer in 1903. Two years later, the brothers unveiled the Wright Flyer III, which Wilbur flew for 24 miles over the span of 39.5 minutes, a longer duration than all of their previous flights combined.