Mike Machat
artist, aviator, and former NSA agent
Michael J. Machat is an American artist, author, and pilot. He specializes in aviation art and was a frequent collaborator of R.E.G. Davies on the book series An Airline and its Aircraft. Several aviation museums have permanent collections of Machat's art.
Biography
Machat grew up in Long Island, New York. He would visit New York airports and draw airplanes as a kid. Machat began flying at age 16, exchanging his drawings and paintings for flying lessons. Although poor eyesight prevented Machat from commercial flying, he would eventually fly in more than 200 aircraft, including with the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School, the Blue Angels, and NASA.
He attended Pratt Institute from 1965 to 1966, then served in the United States Air Force from 1967 to 1970 as an airman. Machat relocated to Los Angeles, California, where he graduated from California State University, Long Beach in 1979. Machat then began working at the Douglas Aircraft Company as a Staff Artist and Corporate Representative.
In 1984, Machat established his own aviation art studio.
The public source identifies “Mike Machat” as artist, aviator, and former NSA agent. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mike, Machat and artist.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q97033700. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1966, 1967 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mike Machat” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.