Planes That Changed the World

The SR-71 Blackbird can travel at three times the speed of sound and at heights of 80,000 feet, at the very edge of space. But its greatest legacy is helping maintain peace when the world was on the brink of nuclear war. Even today, this marvel of engineering remains one of the fastest, highest-flying manned planes in the world. This is its remarkable history, through interviews with the men and women who built it and dared to fly it.

Wing flaps. A circular fuselage. Swept back wings. A little bit of the historic DC-3 exists in every plane that flies today. This masterpiece of engineering went against all received aviation wisdom when it was created in the 1930s, but the gamble paid off magnificently, and created a revolution. The DC-3 helped boost an economy still reeling from the Depression, played the lead role in the D-Day invasion, and through its versatility, rugged reliability, and economy, changed air travel forever.

It began with a mission to take on Boeing's queen of the skies, the mighty 747. The plan: to build the world's first superjumbo, a double-decker jetliner. Building it would be no small undertaking, and failure could mean the end of the Airbus. This is the story of the A380, from its planning to its building to its first big test. It was a high-stakes gamble, with engineering and logistical challenges on a scale never seen before. Engineers wondered if a plane this size could ever get off the ground, and they risked everything to find out.