Aircraft Facts

Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew a plane built by volunteers in a Mojave Desert hangar. On takeoff, the fuel-heavy wings scraped the runway and the winglets broke off. They kept flying anyway. Nine days, three minutes and 44 seconds later, they landed after circling the entire globe nonstop. They had just 106 pounds of fuel left, only 1.5% of what they took off with. The plane now hangs in the Smithsonian.

The SR-71 Blackbird was built from titanium the CIA secretly bought from the Soviet Union - the very nation it was made to spy on. The airframe was 92% titanium, and the vast majority came from Soviet ore. The panels were fitted loose on purpose: on the tarmac the plane dripped fuel, and only Mach-3 friction heat expanded them tight. JP-7 fuel also doubled as a coolant, absorbing heat from the skin.

The U-2 spy plane flies at 70,000 feet, so its pilot lands in a pressure suit that blocks his view of the runway. Fifty feet of wing sticks out each side. A second U-2 pilot chases him in a muscle car at 120 mph, calling the wheels down. Ten. Eight. Six. Four. Two. At two feet it stalls onto the runway. Every landing still ends that way.

A World War II bomber named Doc sat in the Mojave for 42 years as a Navy target. An Air Force veteran spent more than eleven of those years talking the Navy into letting it go. It went home to Wichita, where 1,644 B-29s were built, and retirees from those lines helped rebuild it. Doc is one of two B-29s still flying, and it lands at airports every year so people can climb inside.

The 'retired' stealth jet is still flying The F-117 Nighthawk was officially retired in 2008. About 45 of them still sit at a remote Nevada airfield, and some still take off to play the enemy in training.