Airplanes Facts

More than 800 C-47 transport planes carried over 13,000 paratroopers across the Channel before dawn on D-Day. One flew at the front. After the war it hauled freight for decades. Then it sat in a Wisconsin boneyard, next in line to be cut up and modernized. An Air Force historian chasing a serial number found it there. Passengers still board through the door the paratroopers jumped from.

Harrison Ford has personally flown more than 300 kids on their first airplane ride, and at one Young Eagles Day he flew 43 kids in his de Havilland Beaver. He chaired the Young Eagles program from 2004 to 2009, and in 2016 he flew a 16-year-old at Oshkosh as Young Eagle number 2,000,000. Volunteer pilots still take any kid aged 8 to 17 up for free, and the count has passed 2.5 million.