Viewed from a distance of nearly a century they don't seem as heroic as they really were. They had funny names, repaired bicycles and wore three piece suits to the beach. To the modern eye, they look more like comedians than leading men, but they invented the science of aeronautics. Thinking in three dimensions when the rest of the world couldn't move beyond two. They made human flight possible and every aircraft that has ever flown owes at least something to their work. They are Orville and Wilbur Wright. Wilbur the older of the Wright brothers was born April 16th, 1867 on a Farm in Millville, Indiana. Orville his younger brother came along four years later. Their father was Milton Wright, a Bishop of the United Brethren Church, who could not drive a nail straight into a board. It's really no surprise then that the Wrights attributed their engineering aptitude to their mother. Susan Koerner Wright. A shy woman who happily assisted them in the design and construction of numerous childhood projects. For all their similarities, the Wright brothers also were a study in contrast. Wilbur was so shy as to be almost silent in public. He seemed truly happy only when dismantling something. Mechanical Orville on the other hand, was relatively impulsive. He was the idea generator. Always coming up with the next project and something of a dandy. Together the two formed a well balanced whole. Orville brought passion and energy. Wilbur Persistence and Determination. The Wrights tinkering was accompanied. From a very young age, by a strong entrepreneurial streak. Orville built kites and sold them to classmates. Wilbur, who worked for the publisher of a church newspaper invented a machine that automated the folding of papers for mailing. The family moved from Indiana to Dayton, Ohio. Where Susan Wright died of tuberculosis in 1889. Wilbur the dutiful son nursed her to the end. In 1892, the Wrights opened the Wright cycle company to Build, repair, and sell bicycles. The business grew quickly and the seasonal nature of the bicycle business in Ohio afforded the Wrights long winters, to experiment. The late 1800s were a boom time for invention. New technologies changed nearly every aspect of life, improved furnaces and electrical generators made possible household electrification. Wireless telegraphy foreshadowed radio and television. The first practical adding machine served notice of the coming computer age and the first automobiles appeared on roads previously trod only by horses. But the really big engineering challenge the problem so daunting that many thought it unsolvable was heavier than air flight. Well, Wibur was the oldest of the two, and he was the one who actually came up with the idea of trying to solve this problem. In the very end, in the very beginning, Orville just kind of tagged along. But eventually this, this, the idea of flight became an obsession to the Wright brothers. The Wrights were ironically inspired to study flight by the failure of Otto Lilienthal. During the early 1890s Lilienthal had designed and flown 16 different hang gliders. The leading aviator in the world he died in a crash in 1896. The Wrights saw in Lilienthal's death an opportunity to take the lead in airplane development. Wilbur wrote to the Smithsonian Institution requesting, as he put it, "all that is already known about flight experiments". Studying the Smithsonian's pamphlets and books the Wrights formed some basic ideas about flight. Obviously an aircraft needed wings to provide lift and power to push the craft forward. But the Wrights added a third element, control. Still struggling just to get off the ground, no one but the Wrights ever considered how to steer a plane once it got off the ground. I think it's not coincidental. They were bicycle manufacturers because in recognizing this problem of controllability, what was key for the Wrights was turning. And they recognize that turning an airplane is three dimensional. You have to change the bank of the airplane and then you have to change the pitch of the airplane and you have to kick the nose over. It's really a very, very complex maneuver, if you will, if you think of how an airplane actually turns. The Wrights noticed that birds change the angle of their wings in order to turn. One wing moved down and the other up in perfect unison, controlling all aspects of their flight at once. The movement was simple enough for a bird but seemed impossible to mechanically reproduce. Late one evening, when Wilbur was tending to the bicycle shop and a customer came in and had problems with the inner tube. An inner tube came in a long pasteboard box. And while Wilbur was talking to the customer he find himself with his fingers and inks one of those corners. The box is doing this to it, changing the angle one up one down of the corners of the box and it kind of struck him, this might be a good way of basically just retaining balance for level flight. The Wrights built a biplane kite their first experimental aircraft to test the idea. Using simple hand controls they were able to make the kite climb, dive and turn. They knew that what works in models, often doesn't on a larger scale and decided to build a larger glider. One a man could ride in. They also searched for a suitable place to fly it. A place with predictable and moderate winds. Once again the Wrights did careful research. They wrote to the weather bureau in Washington. Requested locations that fit their needs and were provided with the list. The Wrights then set another round of letters to people at those locations. The only reply they got was from a postman in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In the letter he described that there were no trees or grass. All this was just beach deep sand. There were four giant sand dunes like the one you see that where the monument is on to launch gliders off of. Very hard to get here. sail boat the outer banks. Then once you got here wasn't nobody around. Privacy, Secrecy, Isolation. But then they will find here what they couldn't find anywhere else and that was Southern hospitality. The people. The Wrights packed up their new larger glider and headed for Kitty Hawk. The Wrights took their first large scale glider to Kitty Hawk in late September 1900. They brought with them three trunks full of camping equipment. And set up a wood. frame tent on the dunes near a station of the U.S. life saving service. The biplane glider weighed 50 pounds and cost $15 dollars to build. It had a wooden frame covered in tightly woven cotton. The Wrights tested it first as an unmanned kite. Carefully recording flight data and making small modifications to improve its performance. After three weeks of flying the glider on a string, they enlisted Bill Tate. The local postman who had answered their initial inquiry about Kitty Hawk to help them carry the glider Tto the top of a cluster of high dunes called the Kill Devil Hills. Wilbur lay down across the gliders lower wing Orville and Tate lifted the glider and ran. As the glider started to lift, Wilbur shouted." Let go"! They did And Wilbur sailed gracefully down the slope. He had flown, He made about a dozen flights that day covering a total of perhaps half a mile. With a total flight time of barely two minutes. The wing warping system worked. The glider could be controlled. Thrilled with their initial success, the Wrights returned to Dayton determined to build a bigger and better glider. They studied what little data there was on lift characteristics of different wing designs. Most of which came from Lilienthal's experiments. From that they built the biggest glider ever constructed with wings 22 feet wide and seven feet deep. It weighed nearly 100 pounds and featured an improved steering mechanism. They returned to Kitty Hawk in July 1901 and built a wooden shed on the beach to act as their base of operations. The shed was more accommodating than the previous year's tent. However, it was also the only thing about 1901 that was an improvement over 1900. Wilbur did the flying that almost immediately discovered that the giant wings of the new glider didn't provide as much lift as Lilienthal's data promised. The forward elevator, which control the up and down motion of the plane, didn't. work. The Wrights spent a precious week redesigning and rebuilding the wings and elevator. It helped, but the glider in flight still had a disturbing tendency to spin wildly out of control. In what turned out to be the last man flight of the year. Wilbur crashed. Cutting his face on the elevator, and badly damaging the plane. The Wrights left Kitty Hawk depressed and confused. They turned to Dayton facing a gloomy winter and questioning whether man would ever fly. You find that when you look at the Wright Brothers, they clearly understood the aeronautical research and development process as thoroughly or more than anybody in their time period. And the process that they followed to create the world's first successful airplane was a model of how people do research even in the present day. The Wrights concluded that Lillianthal's. data was wrong. If they wanted to fly, they had to throw away the articles and books and generate their own basic understanding of flight. They built a simple wind tunnel. A box six feet long with a fan in one end and a window on top. Using machinery designed to manufacture Bicycle parts they crafted. model wings out of wax, solder, steel and tin. They tested different shapes and spent painstaking hours documenting the minutia of aerodynamics. They became aware of the entire theoretical underpinnings of flight. They studied and read widely. They created specialized test equipment to to validate some of their own ideas, particularly ideas on controllability. The 1902 glider looked more like a modern airplane than anything to come before it. The wings were flatter, longer and not as deep as the 1901 model. There were stabilizers in the rear to balance the front elevator and keep the plane from side slipping in late summer. The Wrights returned to Kitty Hawk and spent the first few weeks building a large hangar. They improved their living quarters which took on decidedly homey characteristics in anticipation of a long stay. By mid September they had assembled the glider, and a series of short flights gave rise to optimism. On one of the first flights with Orville at the controls, the glider spun out of control and crashed. They repaired the damage, but the sudden and unexpected banking became a recurring problem. Lying in bed considering the aerodynamic forces that could cause the crashes, Orville concluded that when the glider turned, air pressure built up along the stabilizers. He suggested that they eliminate one of the stabilizers and make the other movable to help the plane turn. The problem disappeared. The Wrights stayed in camp through late October. By the time they returned to Dayton, they had already roughed out the design of their first powered airplane. To build it, they needed a light, powerful engine. They wrote to several manufacturers, but none wanted the job. So with the help of one of their bicycle mechanics, they built their own. On September 25th 1903 the Wrights and their newly christened flyer arrived at Kill Devil Hills. Static testing revealed critical problems with the propeller axles. They tried several fixes but in late November, Orville returned alone to Dayton. to machine new shafts. He returned on December 11th. with new propeller. Axles and a fresh $1.00 dollar bill. The bill was from their father Milton Wright who told them to use it to pay for the telegram announcing their success. With the plane finally ready to go, the weather failed them. Kitty Hawk chosen for its prevailing winds, fell dead Calm. Impatient the Wrights and a few locals hauled the flyer to the top of Big Kill Devil Hill, they flipped a coin to see who would fly first. Orville won. The plane rested on a 60 foot rail that served as a runway. Wilbur ran alongside as the flyer moved forward after a 40 foot run it lifted off, raised its nose too high and crashed. It took two days to repair the damage to the flyer. The Wrights move the track back down off Kill Level Hills and onto the flat sand below. The prevailing winds returned, and on December 17th they tried again. This time it was Wilbur's turn. He slid into place atop the bottom wing. Orville stood. alongside. Facing a 27 mile per hour wind, they started the engine. The plane moved slowly forward after 40 feet on flat ground. Under its own power the flyer lifted off. It stayed in the air for 12 seconds before settling into the sand 120 feet away. The first powered, sustained, controlled flight ahd been achieved. They moved the plane back to the rail and Orville took the Controls. He too flew 13 seconds 175 feet. Then Wilbur 15 seconds, 200 feet. Finally, Orville 59 seconds covering 852 feet. The frame of the plane cracked on Landing. Man's. first day of flight had come to an end. With the plane safely stored in its hangar Wilbur and Orville walked four miles up the beach to the Weather Bureau station at Kitty Hawk. They sent a telegram to their father. Inform Press. the Telegram said. Their brother Lauren, when they got the telegram in Dayton, went down to the local newspaper and the local editor read 59 seconds. He said if it would been 59 minutes, it might be newsworthy. The next day in the newspaper, the only thing was mentioned is that the Wright boys will be home for Christmas. Talk about Miss the Story of the Century. The Wright brothers were not naive idealists as they had turned their tinkering into small businesses when they were boys. After their first flight at Kitty Hawk they worked to turn their test craft into a practical flying device. Working at Huffman Prairie a 100 acre Pasture outside Dayton. The Wrights made more than 80 flights in 1904. Testing and revising not just their technology, but also their technique. Theoretically, the machine with the fuel capacity was capable of flying about 8 miles, but they had no skill. So the reason they got better each time they tried it this increased on their abilities and their skill as being pilots. On September 15th 1904 Wilbur made the first complete circle of the field. In November, he flew four circles. around Huffman Prairie, staying in the air for five full minutes. In the spring of 1905 The Wrights built the flyer three which featured improved flight controls. That summer they flew more than 40 successful flights, the longest lasted 39 minutes and covered more than 24 miles. The Wrights test flights turned Huffman Prairie into a significant attraction. The crowds, while gratifying made the brothers nervous since they had Applied for, but had not been granted a patent on their wing. warping system. Now everything that makes the airplane turn is right in front of you. There's nothing inside the wings or anything like that. So when they went back to Ohio in 1904 and 1905, there were a lot of people hanging out trying to walk up close to the airplane, see, everything works. Fearing that someone would steal their technology, at the end of the 1905 year, the Wrights put their aircraft under wraps. and kept it there. For two and a half years they did not fly. During that time rumors took hold that the Wrights had never flown at all. There was so much jealousy involved in the invention of the airplane. The Wright brothers were literally unheard of until 1899 and when they went to compete with men who had, quote, higher educated, college training, all the political backing, all the government funding, I think they were kind of resented by these people because of their lack of education. The Wrights offered their airplane to the United States Army. And the army declined. The government had spent more than $70,000 dollars on Samuel Langley's failed experiments. And the idea that a couple of bicycle repair men from Dayton could succeed where the respected Langley had failed, seemed absurd. The Wrights persisted. They offered to meet strict specifications if The army would agree in advance to buy a Wright flyer if they succeeded. The army refused to sign a contract until it had seen the plane fly. The Wrights wouldn't fly without the contract. The Wrights continued to work behind, closed doors. Without ever testing it, they design and built the Type A flyer. In the Type A the pilot sat upright and a second seat allowed the plane to carry a passenger. In February 1908 The Army relented and gave the Wrights a contract to deliver an aircraft that could meet what seemed at the time, impossible specifications. The plane had to be capable of carrying two men 125 miles at an average speed above 40 miles an hour. A month later, the Wrights signed a second contract with a French company to manufacture Flyers in Europe. Only then did the Wrights return to flight. Still concerned about protecting their technology, they returned to Kitty Hawk. Once again in splendid isolation, they practiced in a modified 1905 flyer carrying as a passenger. A mechanic who had accompanied them from Dayton. At the end of May, Orville returned to Dayton to Prepare a Type A flyer for the army demonstration. Wilbur set sail for France to prepare for demonstration flights there. The Europeans greeted Wilbur with suspicion on August 8th in front of a sparse crowd at a small racetrack near Le Mans. Wilbur took off. He circled the track twice and landed smoothly. The flight lasted less than two minutes, and the French had never seen anything like it. It was a mix of admiration, disappointment, shock. Almost disbelief. They were measuring flights in terms of yards and meters of of length. And here were the Wrights able to produce an airplane that could literally turn figure eights stay aloft for at least a half hour or much longer than that, exhibit perfect controllability. Every day the crowd grew larger. In six months Wilbur made one hundred flights and carried more than 60 passengers. He and his airplane became a sensation. While Wilbur was knocking them dead in Paris, Orville staged the first demonstration flight for the army. On September 3rd 1908 at Fort Myer he took an army officer up for a jaunt around the base parade grounds. For two weeks on opposite sides of the ocean, the two brothers seemed in a kind of competition for who could make the longest flight. Who could take up the most passengers who could draw the largest crowd. On September 17th, the competition ended. Orville flying with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge as his passenger crashed. Wreckage pinned pilot and passenger to the ground. Orville suffered a Fractured thigh, cracked ribs, scalp wounds and back injuries. Selfridge died, becoming the first Fatality in the new era of powered flight. Four days later flying over France, Wilbur, set The World flight endurance record. One hour and thirty one Minutes. This, he said as he got out of the plane will cheer Orville up. It's sad that after 1909-1910 time period we see the Wrights really drop out of the aeronautics business. Wilbur of course dies in 1912, but one has the feeling that the Wrights really had reached the end of their creative tether, if you will. The Wrights flew a few public stunts including a flight up the Hudson River in New York City. They opened a company to manufacture Wright Flyers and concentrated not on research, but on protecting their patents. Exhausted from one of many patent infringement trials, Wilbur contracted typhoid fever. He returned to Dayton too weak to fight. And after three weeks at home died in 1912. When Wilbur died, a part of Orville died too. He lost all interest in the airplane industry. There'd be no more great inventions, no more genius thoughts. Orville sold his interest in the Wright, airplane company for one and a half million dollars. He retired to a mansion on the outskirts of Dayton. He flew for the last time in 19 18. As his invention was proving itself on the battlefields of Europe. He was nearly invisible, appearing only occasionally at ceremonies honoring his and his brother's work. He died in 1948. at the age of 76. less than a year after Chuck Yeager became the first man to break the sound barrier. The machine he and his brother had invented had truly changed the world. At the turn of the 20th century in Dayton, Ohio Hawthorne Street looked much as it does today. Men and women are still living who remember how in the years 1900, 1901,1902,1903. The quiet slow spoken Wright brothers came walking down Hawthorne back again from their journeys to Kitty Hall and how was that bent alert, probing way of theirs. They strode past the homes of Vance, the harness maker, Pahu, the stone cutter, Wellborn, the wagon maker, Wolfram the carriage trimmer. Year after year, they came quietly home to number 7 Hawthorne St. But once within the House, reserve left them with their father, Bishop Milton Wright, their sister Catherine, or the young girl Carrie Grumbach, listening unobtrusively. The Wright brothers studied aloud. Discussed exhaustively, argued in detail. And at last conceived the principles that were to open the skies to the navigation of men. Around the corner from Hawthorne on 4th St. Orville and Wilbur Wright tested not only their ideas, but they examined the theories of other men who had explored the possibilities of flight kayley, Lilienthal, Chanute Langley. The Wrights devised methods of measuring the accuracy of aeronautical theories, including there own. The home was their discussion hall. The shop their laboratory. Both today are gone from date. Moved as monuments to the right memory to the museum at Greenfield Village in Dearborn. Discussion Hall laboratory and testing devices such as their first wind tunnel had their place. But the rights it once had recognized an axiom of aviation that still endures. Proof must come in the air. On this windswept beach in 1900,1901 and 1902. They tested gliders they had built. They taught themselves to be pilots of a high order. They were critical men, but at last their 1902 model pleased them. They flew it farther and with better control than any other glider that man had ever devised. They came back from Kitty Hawk in 1902 with the knowledge that they had solved flights Paramount secret, control. And in the spring of 1903 they designed the four-cylinder engine and fashion 2 propellers. When they next went to Kitty Hawk, they flew. On December 17th, 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright made Man's first four controlled flights in a powered airplane. That day, they lifted the world into a new dimension. What the rights had achieved at Kitty Hawk barely evoked passing attention in a nation whose people were absorbed with the problems of a dynamic new age. There were other, less celestial wonders closer at hand. The automobile, the telephone. The motion picture. But at number 7 Hawthorne St. December 17th, 1903 was a momentous day, the young girl who was then the Wrights housekeeper, Carrie Grumbach, remembers. I remember the telegram, when it come that they had flown, that they had done what they said they would do, they always did as they had planned. The telegram from Kitty Hawk had a special significance for the mechanical worked in the Wrights Bicycle Shop Charlie Taylor. Of course. I was Greatly pleased to know that it had been accomplished, but at that time it didn't seem to be anything wonderful. At that. I started on repairing bicycles back in uh. In the 80s. And then I later went to Dayton and built bicycles. For the Stoddard manufacturing company. And they were just starting up in the bicycle business and I. True, I got acquainted with the rides and I haven't built bicycles for them. I did all the repair work while they went down Kitty Hawk to try out their gliders when in and all they needed was power to keep on flying. Why then to when we designed the motor. I made all the different parts in the in the motor or even made the crankshaft so I made it out of a solid block of steel. About 32 inches long, 6 inches wide, and inch and 5/8 thick. Cut it right out of a solid block by drilling holes and knocking out large pieces out of it and then uh then turning it up in the lathe. A motor itself from the time I started well, I had it ready for test was six weeks, fifty years ago, I can remember as though it was yesterday almost. There was not a complete indifference to the rights discovery. A small group of Americans were laboring to further the art, and in Europe where the airplanes military potential was quickly realized, a fresh wave of enthusiasm for aviation followed the Wright success. In France, Lario, Farman and Briquet were flying airplanes of their own design. The Englishman Curry and the Brazilian Santos DuMont, most of whose experiments took place in France, also captured the imagination of Europe with successful flights. The rights had offered to demonstrate their airplane to the United States Army shortly after their first successful flights. The army declined, preferring to develop its small fleet of balloons as an air arm. Lieutenant Law became the first military officer ever to fly in an airplane. Eight days later, tragedy struck. On a flight at Fort Myer, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge was killed, Orville Wright injured. Shocked but not deterred, both the Army and the Wrights moved to improve the airplane. In the summer of 1909, both Wilbur and Orville Wright came to Fort Myer, this time with a new airplane. It fulfilled the specifications. Including an hours flight, which is my good fortune to ride with Orville for an hour and twelve minutes. Another young Army Lieutenant, Benjamin Foulois, had a chance to fly in the right plane at Fort Myer. On the day following the endurance test with global right and Lieutenant Lam, the Orville, with a quiet little grin on his face, invited me to be his guest on the crucial and final cross country and speed tests. The grin on Orville's face was for my benefit. Particularly as I've been responsible for laying out the course between Fort Myer and Alexandria, VA, and there was not a landing field on the entire outfit out of homebound. Course, except Fort Myer drill ground. On July 30th we took off on the final cross country and speed test. Shortly after, we straightened out on the course for Alexandria. Orville with the same little grin on his face told me that if he had to land anywhere on the route. I need to figure out the thickest clump of trees you could find and land on top of them. Fortunately, the little engine that we had at the time carried us all the way through without any difficulty. And we finally landed back at Fort Margel ground with three world records cross country. 10 miles, altitude 600 feet. And speed 42 and a half miles an. Hour. The United States Army had an airplane. The need now was for pilots. There in the fall of 1909 under Wilbur Wright's instruction, a Lieutenant Fe Humphreys of US engineers and myself were taught to fly, and at the end of some three hours were soloed and told we. Were pilots. So in 1909 the military airplane was mated to the military pilot. Meanwhile, all over the world, aviation pioneers encouraged by the Wright brothers flights were hard at work, the principles of flight were now widely known, and designers were applying them to many types of aircraft. Glenn Curtis, Glenn Martin and the Canadian J.A.D. McCurdy were designing and flying airplanes and competition and for exhibition. In Europe, the airplanes of Blériot, Polum, Farman and De Havilland were demonstrating obvious advances in both speed and range, and in Russia, Igor Sikorsky was taking his first steps into the age of flight. And I remember very, very well the early. Interesting period in France in 1909 and 1910, when the very first attempts were made to push aviation from the purely original experimental flying to some kind of successful practical achievement. I have seen Blériot coming in the same factory to purchase his motor on which a few months later he crossed the English Channel and at that time I had my share of failures with the first helicopter which was a fine machine, only it couldn't fly. Glenn Martin remembers an episode of his pioneering days. I've just been reading an old postcard sent by our family doctor to my mother. Dated September 30th, 1910. This is at a time when I just began to leave the ground in a flying machine. And it says: "For heaven's sake, if you have any influence with that wild eyed, hallucinated young man, call him off before he is killed". "Have him devote his energies to substantial, feasible and profitable pursuits, leaving dreaming to the professional dreamers". For a dreamer, Glenn Martin was attracting a remarkable group of clear, thinking young designers as workmen. The first to join him was Donald Douglas. I guess I must be getting old because somehow. It becomes fun to reminisce. Well. My first. Memory of things in aviation. Was saying. The first Wright airplane demonstrated for the signal Corps 1908 in Fort Myers outside of Washington. So I took the streetcar and one thing and another and got out to Fort Myer. Well, there she was, as I had seen her pictured, the old. Wright, pusher? There were Wilbur and Orville and. There was that old launching device that kind of looked like a guillotine, and they had the airplane perched up at the starting part of the track and the weight all ready to go. I remember well. I believe it was Wilber going out and holding up a bit of dust and dropping it to see that there wasn't a bit of wind. And then as I recall, it was Wilbur that got into the machine. Well, I guess it was Colonel Lam. They pull the old latching down this little wooden track it went with those funny old props batting around it, apparently a pretty slow speed. And off she went. One of the first pilots was Roy Nobbin shoe, who was a balloonist even before he became an airplane pilot. I'm finding out. Right back of the. Pilot was Walter Brookins. Water was a great pilot. His judgment was uncanny, but he was very temperamental. As a matter of fact, he and Arch Hoxsey and Ralph Johnson was the three best pilots that the Wright company had, and each one tried to outdo the other. My friend Dick Ferris remarked to me one time. He said. I have been an impresario. I've handled actors and primadonnas. But he says these aviators are starting where the other fellow leaves off, and he says it's impossible to do anything with him. The ambitions of some designers went far beyond their skills, as Igor Sikorsky has said. In the history of aviation there have been many contraptions which, to the good fortune of their inventors, failed to fly. Inventors of a high skill sometimes were deadly serious and demonstrating the utility man could expect from the airplane. Lawrence Perry, whose contributions to the aircraft instrument field were momentous, puts a pre war aircraft through its paces. All this ferment, however often it seemed to lack direction, was contributing in one way or another to the growth of aviation. The airplane was growing cleaner in design. Its horsepower was more dependable. The disparaging term aeronaut was giving way to aviator, a term of respect. Aviation was emerging as a science. A pioneer aeronautical engineer and educator, Dr. Jerome. Hunsacker professional education in aeronautical engineering. Began in this country. At MIT in the winter of 1913- 14. This course was started by President Mclaurin borrowing me from the Navy Department and supplying me with one assistant as staff who was a recent graduate in mechanical engineering, Donald Douglas, from whom Moore was to be heard. The pusher engine of early planes had been replaced by the tractor engine installations, which allowed higher speeds. The Wrights were foreseeing these helpful aircraft devices, and other inventors such as Elmer Sperry were inventing and refining them. Here, a Curtiss sea plane flies with the early Sperry automatic pilot. Almost without exception, in the first decade of the airplane, the designers were pilots. They built, tested and flew. Their own designs Wrights, Blèriot, Santos-DuMont, Curtis, Rose, Sikorsky, De Havilland and Martin. At Glen Martins, a band of engineers and Craftsman had gathered together whose names and time would be synonymous with aircraft designs of world rank. Donald Douglas, James H Dutch Kindelberger, Lawrence, Larry Bell. Alan Lockheed, John Northram. the United States was the cradle of flight. Inventors of a high order had appeared. Our pilots were unmatched. First rate designers emerged. Brilliant men specialized in the components of the airplane. But as a pioneer who specialized in aircraft horsepower, Frederick B Rentschler summarizes. Prior to World War One. Our most important contribution. To aviation, there's a flight of the Wright brothers. From December 1909. To March 1911, thirteen months, the entire United States Air Force consisted of one officer and myself. Uh. Once civilian mechanic eight enlisted men one aeroplane. The government at that time wasn't very keen about turning money loose for flying. I had the the great appropriation of $150 dollars allotted to me to take care of the airplane for the entire year in1910, January 1910. Two signal officer directed me to proceed and said what Sam Houston, TX to teach myself how to fly. On March 2nd I made four flights, 3 good and one bad. The last one I cracked up and put the plane in the shop for about 10 days. After each crack up, I used to sit down and try to puzzle out what had happened. Then I'd write to the Wright brothers and tell them all that I thought had happened. They'd proceed to write back and tell me what I ought to have done. In other words, I expected I'm about the only man living today who learned to fly by correspondence. Two air minded young Lieutenant shortly joined General Foulois, the one Man Air Force. They were Hap Arnold and T. DeWitt Milling. Looking back 42 years ago to March 1911. The month and the month in which General Arnold and myself were ordered to Dayton to learn to fly with the Wright brothers. And to think of the plane that we used at that time and see the advance that has been made since, it seems incomprehensible that one man in his own lifetime could live through such progress. After our very brief period of instruction. Of about a week. Two to three hours in order to learn to fly. We were sent to College Park, MD. We immediately started in to try to find some method by which we could develop from the standpoint of taking photographs, using the machine gun, dropping bombs. The air arm of the United States Navy began under equally apathetic circumstances. Naval aviator number 3 was Admiral John H Towards. In the autumn of 1911, when I was quite a young naval officer serving aboard one of our battleships. I got the idea that I wanted to learn to fly, that naval aviation would amount to something for naval purposes. So I put in a request to the Navy Department and they came back and quite frankly said. That they didn't believe aviation whatever amount to anything. But if it turned out to be otherwise, they would consider my request during that winter. Congress. Appropriated money for the Navy to buy three airplanes, so they were in it whether or not they wanted to be. And then they decided to select three officers to be taught to fly as part of the contract with the manufacturers of the airplanes. I was fortunate enough to be one of those three officers. The other two were Ellison and Rogers. I also became a very close friend of Glenn Curtis. And was associated with him throughout his whole life. The man had an enormous amount of vision. He had already conducted, in cooperation with the Navy, tests of landing an airplane on a platform, on a cruiser and also of taking off. But he had in his mind then the idea which later developed into the powerful carriers that we have today. The airplane now had official recognition both from the Army and the Navy, but it was a cautious. Acceptance. The time forged armament still held sway when the fledgling army Flyers experimented with a primitive bomb site and a Lewis machine gun installed an aircraft at College Park, Maryland. They landed and foresaw whole battles that someday might be fought in the air. The war department promptly pierced that bubble. An official spokesman pointed out with finality that the army had airplanes for just one purpose, reconnaissance. From a pistol shot at Sarajevo, the first of the great modern world wars exploded. And almost overnight, all of Europe was engulfed in conflict. Once the great armies had met head on, the conflict resolved itself into a desperate struggle to hold this plot of ground, this foot of Earth. Military analysts called it positional warfare. But the foot soldiers knew it only as a war of trenches, a desperate fight for a waterlogged hole. Automotive power began to supplement the feeding, supplying and tending of troops burrowed in the Earth. The tank made its combat appearance, but for many months the First World War remained an earthbound conflict. The airplane was put to work just as the US War Department spokesman had prophesied, as observation and scouting craft. The source of peril lay in the artillery, machine gun and rifle fire, scourging the entrenched troops from across the wasted land. But in the air, allied and German pilots often waved to each other as they passed on their observation missions. Then, instead of the courteous wave, the opposing pilots began exchanging pistol fire. Presently, the first crudely mounted machine guns appear. Now the frantic race of inventing, improvising, adapting and refining aircraft equipment began. Quickly, the Germans countered the hand operated machine gun by installing upon their aircraft the invention of Tony Fokker, a machine gun synchronized to fire through the aircraft propeller. A paramount lesson that the allies were to remember a generation later was being learned in air warfare for the first time. No design capable of still further development could be frozen. And countermeasures must be met by counter countermeasures. It was becoming clear that no nation or race had a corner on inventive skill. While the single engined airplane had been engrossing, most designers in Russia Igor Sikorsky. In 1912 I decided that the time came to build a large machine with several motors. At that time I was certain already that the future of aviation will be connected with fairly large aircraft, that they closed cabin with its comfort, protection from wind and so forth represent a must. And in 1913 I completed my first four motored aeroplane, Le grand the ship proved a complete success. It looked quite well. Le Grand's, military successor the IIya Muromets was the 1st four engine bomber in world history. It struck time after time at the Central Powers on the Eastern Front. The internal combustion engine now became an instrument of intensive technical development. The first successful engine had not been developed until 1860. One of the world's foremost engine designers, Leonard S Hobbs, recollects its history. It starts out actually with a little known Frenchman by the name of Lenoir who has never gotten the credit he deserved. He built and actually marketed the first internal combustion engine, and it was from his engine that the Wright brothers were able to build one. Of course the early pre war power plants are fairly well known. The Anzanis and the Curtiss OXs The First World War did mark a great advance in power plants. First there were the rotaries, the clergies, the Gnome Rhônes. Then there was the Renault engine, which was a very good French engine, and the British RAF engines. Toward the end of the war came the very beginning of what I think is the is the modern engine. First there was the Hispano Suiza with its solid block and a valve arrangement which is is standard in a lot of engines to this day. Also out of the First World War came the a remarkable German effort, the BMW. Now, this engine is the first engine that I know of in all history that attempted to overcome the effects of altitude on power. Into a conflict in which European antagonists had been tempered by three years of savage battle, whose equipment had been perfected by the necessity of survival without regard to cost, the United States now plunged. It was the world's 14th ranking air power, with only 28 airplanes, 65 pilots supplemented by 50 flying students. Its Navy combat Air arm was even smaller. Its industry lacked integration. The nation that had allotted Benny Fulois $150 in 1910 for maintenance of that year's Air Force promptly voted $600 million to fulfill a plea by the Allies to have 5000 airplanes and 4500 pilots on the Western Front. by the spring of 1918, when we entered the war, the country knew that the United States already had an industrial capacity,double that of Great Britain, France and Germany combined. We quickly realized that to supplement the meager aeronautical developments resulting from years of federal indifference to air power, we had to obtain licenses for the production of proved British and French airplanes and aircraft engines in our new factories. Our national mistake was the assumption that an instrument as dynamic as the airplane could be designed, tested and developed overnight. Thousands of rookie pilots training in the United States and in England and France had an inspiring example of American air combat performance through the brilliant exploits of the Lafayette Escadrille, a team of American volunteers who had joined the Allied cause in 1916. But American performance had its hours of frustration. One of the first young pilots to see action in France with the first Aero Squadron was Oliver P. Echols. We'd been equipped with a. New type of French airplane. With the new and very much improved engines. These airplanes were assigned to us, the squadron had the strength of 18 airplane. And we were assigned the mission of supporting one of the American divisions. One afternoon in the attack, our planes took off 18 strong. During the afternoon, all of the airplanes force landed from engine failure. Fortunately none of them behind the enemy line. Out of the 18 airplanes that went out, none of them got back. The pilots of World War One made the term dogfight synonymous with their work. America's top ace, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker of the famed 94th hat in Ring Squadron, reflects on the different approaches to combat of the pilots of World War One and the pilots of today. That individualism was possible because the planes were much slower. You'd stay In maneuver. Whereas today it's impossible because of the tremendous speed, the difference of 100 mile an hour and six, seven and six or seven hundred miles an hour. We had 150 horsepower. Today If they haven't got 5 or 6 thousand horsepower, it's no good. We had two little pop guns, 30 caliber that would shoot sometimes 450 rounds a minute. Today they've got six and eight fifty caliber guns, that 'll shoot a thousand rounds a minute with a couple of cannon thrown in 20 millimeter or. 37 millimeter cannon and then maybe a. Half a dozen or a dozen rockets, that. Have terrific destructive power, all of which means that. Today, the time element is so limited for a pilot in combat. With an enemy that it's a matter of fraction of a second. Today is a cockpit full of instruments and gadgets pressurized these air conditioned we had a gasoline gauge, an oil gauge, we had a tachometer or revolution counter. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. And the 4th instrument was an altimeter that we could never rely on. The Navy's pre war requests for funds to build up. Its air arm had been denied and only a skeleton Naval Air force. Existed. A naval officer whose career has bridged 2 wars in aeronautics. Admiral DeWitt C Ramsay. From the outset. The Navy's problem has been to bring aircraft into the mobile operating forces of the fleet. We may say that this had its start. And World War One and post the post World War One. When kite balloons were used from battleships and auxiliaries. For gunfire spotting. And tactical reconnaissance. The equipment was. Very cumbersome. And as hydrogen was used as the lifting gas for the balloons. We found that it was not a satisfactory measure of doing enabled job. So they were abandoned after a short, relatively short trial. The real beginning of naval aviation, let us say, took place in England, where during World War One, the latter part of it, the British converted two ships, The Furious and The Argus, and built into them the features which were desirable for aircraft launching and recovery. I happen to have been in England about that period and kept our Navy. Department informed of the progress of the British in this field. As a result. The Navy embarked on a initial program of converting the old Collier Jupiter. And to our first flat top, The Langley. In 1918, as the war began to move toward its Climax, American aircraft equipment still had not entered combat. An intensive effort was being made to perfect the Liberty engine. Before The Liberty or any other aerial product of the United States designing boards could be put in action. The final critical offensive of World War One had begun. Millions of men pulled out of trenches to attack or retreat. Above them, to be sure, planes flew in bombing and strafing missions. Individual pilots whose names became legendary met in dogfights. Germany's von Richthofen, France's Vaughen, Canada's Bishop, Germanys Göring and such American aces as Rickenbacker, Luke, Loveberry, Vaughan, Springs, Kindley, Landis, Swaab, Hunter. In retrospect, it might be said that aviation itself. has servered is very small part. And the result. Of the World War One conflict. However, it did prove itself. That is it. It was easy to recognize that with proper equipment. in another later time. Aviation might become a real instrument of military warfare. After the war was over, a great many of American boys had been taught to fly. But they didn't get to the front. Of course after the war was over, they had nothing to do, and there were great many surplus airplanes, and that is the period when you hear so much about of the days of barnstorming after the war with all these surplus airplanes. A lot of the fellows who had been taught to fly then decided to go out and carry passengers and do stunts and regular exhibition flying, principally at county fairs and state fairs and things of that sort. Both the Army and Navy Air arms shortly were reduced once again to organizations hardly larger than the membership of a civic club. Yet in both services, the men who remained were uniquely zealous advocates of their calling. Almost to a man, they realized they had only begun to explore the capacities that the airplane offered in size, speed, range and altitude performance. A decade was dawning in American history that was to be known, flippantly, as the era of wonderful nonsense. Beneath its surface corruption, its wild enthusiasms and its extravagant posturing, history now has found that it was a time in which men in many fields of the Arts and Sciences were employing immense physical energy to attain goals of a sober work. Aviation had its share of such men. The accomplishments of the 20's were presaged in 1919 by Man's first flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The NC-4 a large flying boat, whose development had begun during the war, was chosen, as the Navy's pioneer pilot Admiral Towers points out, for the ambitious. Task. When the war was over, the first one was just about completed. So I proposed to the Navy Department that would go ahead the following spring and. Where there's many of these aircraft as could be built by that time that the Navy undertake to be the first to fly the Atlantic. Luckily for me, I was selected to command that expedition. It's all history now. Two of the three airplanes. Landing at sea in very rough water was so damaged they couldn't make it, but the NC-4 made it from Newfoundland to the Azores to Lisbon. Army pilots already had inaugurated airmail service on May 15th, 1918, a service that had been under discussion since 1910. William Boeing, who had entered aviation in 1916, was instrumental in starting the first international airmail service on the North American continent. In 1919. Eddie Hubbard. And I took a flight up to Vancouver, BC. On our return trip. The postmaster at Vancouver handed us a mail sack for delivery to the postmaster at Seattle. This was the first international male ever carried by plane into the United States. What real utility is the airplane actually offered were overshadowed in the public eye by its use as a spectacular, stunning device throughout the pastures and primitive flying fields of the country. The journey could be bought for as little as $50 dollars and men who had flying in their blood preferred to scramble for the few dollars they could make, risking their lives in exhibition flying rather than seeking out pedestrian jobs. As one of them, Dick Depugh cheerfully said, the greatest hazard in flying is the risk of starving to death. Abruptly, the country's attention concentrated on a single man with a single theme. Brigadier General William Mitchell, who had had a distinguished war record, argued that the Mahan doctrine of sea power had been outmoded by the airplane and pleaded for a separate national air arm. He contended in seeking a sixty million dollar appropriation for Army Air services, or about half the cost of a single battleship, that the United States could begin developing an Air Force which could hold mastery of both the air and the seas. Larry Bell was still with Glenn Martin when. That resulted in Congress bringing about a test wherein one of the targets that we were supposed to sink or try to sink was the famous Oster Friesland, the pride of the German Navy, which we had captured. This ship. Was anchored about a hundred miles offshore and six of the Martin bombers went out, they each carrying a two thousand pound bomb. They paraded over the battleship and they dropped the six bombs and only one hit it, and that was by mistake. The rest were timed to detonate at a hundred feet below the surface and it practically exploded the Oster Friesland. At least it ripped the bottom of the ship from. Bow to stern and the ship sank in 4 minutes. The Navy had already begun systematically to broaden the scope of its Bureau of Aeronautics. Many of its men, whose views of the need for air power were not as vehement as Billy Mitchell's, nevertheless already had envisioned carriers as the heart of future striking forces. Admiral Ramsey was the navigator of the Navy's first flat top The Langley. The Langley had at best 14 knots maximum speed. And that's all this wind speed she could generate manufacture. So we had to wait for adequate wind conditions to perform flight operations. The nation's first large aircraft carriers, The Saratoga and The Lexington, were designed and were being built. These great ships. Developing approximately 180,000 horsepower. Manufactured all of the wind that was needed. In the absence of a surface wind for flight operations. The nation accepted the airplane and tacitly agreed with its advocates, but there was still no federal provision for long range planning and procurement. Nevertheless, a corps of designers and manufacturers stayed with the business. And the ceaseless drive to attain longer range and more reliable performance. The airplane, its engine, its components and its instruments steadily were growing more complex. But the primary goal was speed. Roscoe Turner: "I have maintained ever since that I've been flying that there's only one reason for flying, and that is speed. It's 1910 Curtiss, 49 miles an hour, 1910 White 61 miles an hour. 1911 Wyman, 78 miles an hour. 19 and 20 Mosley, 156 miles an hour. Moran In 19 and 22 206 miles an hour and 19 and 25. Doolittle's 232 miles an hour, Jimmy Doolittle a hell for leather pilot whose own cold judgment was that he was essentially a technician. These record flights. Have a very real meaning. Competition has perhaps always been the greatest stimulus to improvement. And out of this competition. Came improvement. Improvements that were. Improvements in the performance of aircraft and the safety of aircraft, and those improvements were immediately applicable to the military and indirectly applicable to commercial aviation. The firm, out of the early 20s, brought forth men who combined technical gifts with a skill of organization. A few such men, like Chance Vought, had formed their own companies and built successful airplanes. Others had served their apprenticeship with Aviations, early pioneers, but now they were branching out on their own. Dutch kindelberger recollects a small episode that launched an enduring company. Even in the 35 years that I've been messing with it myself, there have been vast changes, particularly technically. I can remember very distinctly when at the Martin Company in 1920, Don Douglas, who was then the chief engineer, left to come out to California to start his own business. I helped him pack. We packed up from his office about oh two ordinary condensed milk cartons full of data. In those two cartoons, we put everything that was known and printed. And some of it wrong about the science of aviation engineering. Today, you couldn't pack into this room the index of such technical information, let alone the subject matter. Gene began to get complicated, and from there on came the specialists. A great many great men have contributed to aviation purely as specialists Sperry. One of the greatest. Colonel Clark, who devised one of the first good airfoils. Sam Heron came along on a Cylinders's and his fuel and then Frank Mark with his carburetion devices and later fuel injection. Frank Caldwell with his propeller. Her earliest propellers were all wooden propellers, but they had several shortcomings. They were subject to atmospheric troubles and they twisted out of shape and various climates, and they were also quite thick so that at the high speed at which propeller. Tips. Operated they. They're losing efficiency. Uh, one of the things which we did to overcome this was to develop a metal propeller. Uh, which first was a drop forged aluminum alloy blade being very much thinner than the wooden ones, the efficiency was maintained in better condition. And also they were quite stable in various atmospheric conditions. Sam Herron began working on aircraft engines as early as nineteen nine and shortly went to the Royal Aircraft Factory in England. I came to this country in 1921 and for the next five years was engaged in air cooled cylinder development. It was really the air cooled engine that made fuel development so necessary. The first move was to put tetraethyl lead in the existing gasoline. Later the Air Force got the idea of adding the component. That has the high the high end of the octane scale to the gasoline and that eventually led to 100 octane gasoline. Frank mark. The carburetion and fuel control specialist. Our carburetion work. Has always had to be a good bit like that of the Wright brothers in the respect that we could get little guide from the textbook. The automobile carburetor, of course, was designed to operate on the level the aircraft carburetors have to fly in, dive, even fly upside down. Also they have to go up an altitude where the air is thin. Mock, Hobbs, Perry, Clark, Caldwell, Heron. The singular devotion with which these men and scores of other specialists pursued their particular fields leads. Jim Jack Horner, whose own specialty of aircraft production combined the fruits of all their labours to say: "That heritage. Of. Research. Development background work. That goes into aircraft has continued. Throughout the whole existence of aircraft and the great improvements that have come there too. After that. With flight becoming a little bit more common. I think it's important to realize the fervor with which those individuals. Did carry on their work. It was a passion with them. Then, midway in the 20s, came two events that turned the course of American aviation sharply upward. First, the government adopted the recommendations of President Coolidge's moral board. These call for a sustained aircraft procurement program built on the foundation of a privately operated and technically competitive aircraft industry. Although both military airmen and technologists were convinced that the airplane long before had outgrown its function as a scout, the bulk of our aircraft still consisted of observation planes. Now new, more powerful engines began to emerge for advanced aircraft, which both services had developed. The nation moved rapidly from a third rate air power to international leadership. The second event was the successful Dream Charles Lindbergh made come true. In his single engine, Ryan monoplane Lindbergh had flown the Atlantic nonstop to Paris. Two weeks later, carrying Charles Levine as a passenger. Clarence Chamberlain flew the Atlantic and landed in Germany. First we have all we were trying to beat Lindbergh away, and 2nd we had to keep our plans a deep, dark secret because we had overheard Missus Levine say. "If I thought my Charlie was going in that airplane, I'd burn it up". We finally got away about 6:00 o'clock in the morning on the 4th of June 1927. The first thousand miles to Newfoundland was through was good weather. The only trouble was we had headwinds and our tests on Long Island showed that we could fly for 40 hours with at 100 miles an hour. While on the flight up to Newfoundland we were only making 70 miles an hour and 70 miles an hour for 40 hours is 2800 miles. It was 3200 to land on the other side, leaving the last 400 to swim. Well fortunately, the wind shifted after we left. Newfoundland and as you see, we made it. Lindbergh's lonely adventure gripped the imagination of the world as one of man's most dramatic achievements. The nation turned from its casual cynicism to make the shy young pilot together with the airplane, a shining symbol of the horizon, still beckoning for conquest. A vital factor in the ascendancy of American aircraft had resulted from the work of two companies concentrating on the intensive development of the radial air cooled engine. In this country, Charlie Lawrence was the first one to go into the air cool side and did some quite good work his the. Products being eventually taken over by the Wright company and it was really one of his engines after a couple of major designs and there were really major designs, but one of his engines that powered the Lindbergh flight. Following this came one of the best of all of the power plant engineers George J Mead with his famous Wasp and Hornets which which set up a new standard. These engines had built in superchargers and just about all the modern features. In fact, they are fairly representative of today's engines. Along with this came another of the major developments in the in the power plant that is the turbo supercharger. The turbo supercharger was really quite a long time coming. The French Frenchman by the name of Rateau had originally started to try and get it, but it took the General Electric Company and Doctor Moss to get this thing, which made almost all the difference in the world the unusual engineering accomplishments. Of our American aeronauticsl Industry began to bear fruit. In the late 20s and early 30s, from the military point of view, for the first time, our various types of combat planes were unmatched abroad. Moreover, we found the solid beginning. Of, commercial air transport. I remember very well in one evening when Lindbergh and I were sitting in a small restaurant in Cuba, which we reached on the as the end of a Caribbean flight, and using the menu for paper, we made sketches of a transatlantic Clipper. That was back in 31'. A few years later, the transatlantic Clippers have been produced, created, proved success, and as at present we know that transoceanic flying. Is perfect routine, perfectly self-evident part of our modern life. Jimmy Doolittle pioneered transcontinental nonstop flights. In 1922, I flew from Pablo Beach, Florida, near Jacksonville to San Diego, CA, a distance of about 2200 miles in 22. hours and 20 minutes. In 1931. I flew from. Los Angeles, CA to New York in. 11 hours and 15 minutes. That first flight was the first time that the continent had ever been crossed in less than one day. Second Flight was the first time it had ever been crossed in less than half a day. Meantime, the army and the Navy air arms were making fast strides in developing aviation. They were flying farther, higher and faster. The Air Corps was perfecting its concept of the bomber as a long range strategic weapon. In its exercises, the Navy was demonstrating the soundness of the carrier task force. Individual officers were exploring the use of new instruments and accessories and testing new theories to determine aircraft reliability. Two famous army pilots, Carl Tooey Spaatx and Ira Eakcer, flew seven days in 1929 without landing. The question Mark Flight was an endeavor. To use refueling as a means of keeping a plane in the air for a long time. The driving inspiration behind it, I believe, was our acre on the course between San Diego and Burbank. We passed over the home of Mrs. Spaatz, father, mother, and every time he passed over as he would take my oldest daughter, who was then about six or seven out to see us go overhead. And on the 5th or 6th day she pointed us out to Taddy and said Daddy, there's your daddy up there. He's been up in the air for five or six. five for five days. Don't you think it's wonderful? And Taddy looked up and said it said no. I think it's dumb. But the flight did prove that refueling was practical. General Eacker remembers an incident that forecasts the need for equipment which would permit blind flying. In 1919, flying in the Philippines from Manila to Stotsenberg, our station at that time, I ran into a typhoon and the rain was so heavy that I couldn't see the horizon. I fell in the spin and all of the fact that the Manila Bay was yellow and the rain was darker I was I able to recover from the spin and fly home. To my surprise I found for the first time, but when you can't, couldn't see, you couldn't fly. I described this to Lieutenant Longfellow, later General Longfellow in the Second World War, and we began some crude experiments by hanging a plum Bob down across the instrument board and by putting a carpenters level on the linger on and got so that with these two aides we could fly through cloud through several thousand feet of cloud. And that was one of the early days. Of instrument flying. Ten years after General Eaker's Manila experience Jimmy Doolittle, an association with The Sperry company, tackled the problem. I made the first blind flight, the first completely blind flight, taking off under a hood, flying a prescribed course and landing back under the hood without ever having seen out of the aeroplane. This doesn't sound very important now. But out of that came two instruments, the artificial horizon and the directional gyro, that are today's standard equipment on every commercial aeroplane and every combat military aeroplane. The chain of development led back to General Eaker. During the first transcontinental blind flight. Bill Kepner and I had a very practical but unexpected demonstration of the value of instrument flying. My ship was a P-12 with a hood over it and a similar ship of P-12. Bill followed behind as the safety pilot so that he could tell me to turn right or left to avoid the obstacles or other planes in flight. At one point he was giving me a rather repeated instructions and I could tell by the water seeping into the under the cover that we were in heavy rainstorm. Finally he said hold your present course steadily, I'm going to fly formation on you and four or five minutes he called on the radio again and he said, we've come through the storm now and I can see again. During that period of time you led us through because I couldn't see either. The Great Depression had come. The industry was hard hit, but nevertheless new companies developed to meet the increasing complexity of the airplane and its growing use of metals, electronics and automatic controls. Dutch Kindleberger departed from Douglas to take over North American. Companies were formed bearing the famous names Bell, Fairchild, Northrop, Beech, Cessna, a World War Navy pilot, Leroy Grumman left civil engineering to enter aviation. We know that a conventional airplane. Wouldn't. Get us an order. We finally ended up with the design of the first military fighter with retractable landing gear. For which we got a contract and which proved to be highly successful having the speed for an excess of any current. Army or Navy fighter of that time. A pioneer aviation journalist, Earl Findley, once went to see the Wright brothers, contemporary Thomas Edison. I asked if I could have a short interview with Mr. Edison. You have to get up off of close to him. He put his hand up like this Sayin' Eh?, Mr. Mr. Edison. What do you think of the airplane? Oh the Airplane? And this was after he had been talking to Farman all morning when the biplane. Never amount to a damn. Till they get there, they got to do it different. They have to have something like a Hummingbird. Go up. And go this way and come back this way, that way, this way and come down, he said. And. Well, I. I tried it once, it'aint easy. I got to do on something else. But somebody's gonna do it. But that's remained the opposite side of speed, namely the aircraft that could fly with no speed at all, that could take off from any spot and would not be in need of an airport. at all. The 30's also were the years in which each summer fierce competition was held to determine the best of the airplane breed. Proof of the individual airplanes, engines and pilots came in the National Air races, with thousands looking on, the legendary pilots raced. Doolittle, Hazelip, Turner, Whitman, Levier, Goldbach, Newman, Fuller, Jacqueline Cochran and Flyers still flew against the clock across the continent, across the seas and indeed around the world itself. Falcon, Post, Gatty, Bird, Hughes, Amelia Earhart and wrong way, Corrigan. As the hour swung late in the 30s, the air races were curiously American. For in Europe and Asia. Aviation was not a case of relatively puny efforts, and some, such as America, was providing much of it from individual man and companies. Rather, the vast resources of powerful foreign nations now were thrown behind the construction of air forces designed to subdue the world or to defend against such aggression in the United States. Under the impact of a depression, Congress had scrapped the moral board procurement plan and stopped providing appropriations for 1800. Military airplanes that had been scheduled. On New Year's Day 1936, the Army Air Corps had only three hundred planes fit for war duty. A year later, we had dropped to 6th place among powers and air combat strike. Although our industry was judged to be technically at least 18 months ahead of foreign competition. Premiere Deladier lamented. If I had had 4000 airplanes, there would have been no Munich. France had squandered a first rate air power while she sat behind the Maginot Line. The British too had let the Axis powers outstrip them. Frantically, both countries turned toward the United States, aware that in the very act of running hard to meet crisis after crisis, an emphasis had been placed upon research, experiment and development which gave the United States technically superior. Aviation equipment. So the free world turned to the United States, not only for airplanes but all of those weapons embodying the modern arsenal. To expand its facilities, train workers, and to adapt its job shop operations to techniques of mass production took time. The tooling was still under way when Germany struck. Poland was shattered. Poland and Belgium were overrun. France succumbed Gratitude of every home in our island. In our empire, and indeed throughout the world. Excepting the abodes of the guilty. Goes out to the British airmen who undaunted by odds. Unwearied in their constant challenge of mortal danger. Are turning the tide of war. By their prowess. And by their devotion never in the field of human conflict. Was so much out. By so many. To serve you. Now the stubborn British stood alone. Over Poland, Holland, Belgium and France, Germany's Luftwaffe had demonstrated that the airplane was a vital weapon of modern offensive war. In the skies above England. The Royal Air Force now demonstrated that the airplane was a vital instrument of modern defensive war. The struggle in Europe shook America. A month after Congress had received a bill providing only 61 combat airplanes for the Army Air Corps for the following year, President Roosevelt called for a long range production program of 50,000 airplanes. America slowly mobilized its productive capacity. It began to draft its young men. It sought to train them with wooden guns, cardboard tanks and mock airplanes until it could gear its productive capacity to build the real thing. The war spread. Germany sees Norway turned on its momentary ally, Russia. Overran Greece. Joined its partner Italy in Africa and encouraged its Asiatic ally Japan. Nothing could have convinced the people of America more surely of the bitter nature of modern war than the sneak punch that Japan threw at Pearl Harbor. The nation fell to work to expand its token battle forces and its production into a great tide of men and machines. To train men and to equip them required long months, particularly in aviation. Immediately after the president's pronouncement in 1940, the licenses are given. To the automotive group, largely to assist. And the production schedules which lie ahead. And nevertheless until the end of 1943. The equipment which actually saw service. On the various fighting fronts. All over the world are furnished entirely by the aeronautic lendistry. Because it was a fact that it required. 20 months to two years for the average automotive company. To begin. With their momentum at full flood, the Japanese swept through the Pacific. Jimmy Doolittle and a little band of Flyers carried the war home to them in a joint Navy Air Force operation. I've frequently been asked what was the purpose and what was the effect of the first Tokyo raid. Well, the purpose was to take the war to Japan, to show them that their island was not in Violet. The effect? The effect was to cause them to divert some of their military strength that was needed in the South Pacific to the protection of the home islands. The actual damaging effect. Was very little. Our aeroplanes were on the Hornet. We were intercepted. Just after daylight on the morning of April 18th. 1942 by Japanese surface craft we took off, immediately proceeded to target and. All but one of the planes carried on to the coast of China. We carried one ton of bombs and each one of 16 aeroplanes we dropped 16 tons of bombs on four or five different targets. When you realize that from the Marianas and the later stages of the war, B-29's were carrying as much as six thousand tons of bombs in one operation and dropping them on a single target, you realize how puny our effort was. Slowly, the nation began to regain control of the air and the sea lanes that it had lost in the Pacific. The first great victory was the Battle of the Coral Sea. Captain Thatch, one of the Navy's ablest Flyers and tacticians, remembers that battle and the subsequent Battle of Midway. If you're going to apply the principle of concentration of force, for example, you've got to work with other people and have a good system of teamwork. I think that's one of the reasons why. An attack by a carrier based Air group is so effective it's almost a simultaneous thing, like a 12 punch in boxing. In the Battle of the Coral Sea, for example, the dive bombers and torpedo planes. And the fighters came in almost simultaneously. But the enemy concentrated on the dive bombers. At the same time that let the torpedo planes in, and they did most of the damage, on the other hand. In the Battle of Midway later. The enemy fighters concentrated on the torpedo planes. And the dive bombers came in almost unmolested. I could see them coming down like a huge waterfall and there were practically no misses. They were the ones that did the job. And the Battle of Midway, with its growing stream of trained soldiers, sailors and airmen equipped with improved weapons, the United States and her allies took the offensive. Ramal was driven from Africa. Sicily and Italy were invaded. From their bases in England, American bombers began to strike at the heart of Germany under the direction of General Spaatz. Strategic bombing was one of the ways of winning the war. And our fighter operations in a large measure developed into a covering operations for the bombers. In order to do that, we had to have the development that had taken place, good radio, so the leader of the fighter outfits. Could not only talk to his own men, but be in communication with the bombers. And in turn get some guidance from ground control stations on the ground by radio. This resulted in a different type of fighting and a different type of operation. But it proved conclusively. In World War Two. That the airplane had developed to such an extent that air warfare. They came a different war altogether than land and sea warfare. Well would deal. A member of the team of designers who created the B-17 saw the airplane altered from a defensive to an offensive weapon. The conception of strategic air bombing was not fully developed at that point. Originally, for instance, the B-17 was built to protect our coast from an invading fleet, and hence it was called the Flying Fortress. But when we got to England, it was obvious that to use these bombers to the greatest advantage that we would have to not only get the enemies of supply lines, but the places where they manufactured his military equipment. The British thought it would be easier to do it at night. They'd have much greater chance of success and would be less vulnerable to. Enemy fighters and they called their bombing saturation bombing. They dropped large numbers of bombs on a large industrial area. The Americans, however, decided that with the B17 and the B24 that they could pinpoint a specific target, for instance the ball bearing factory of Swineford. They, in order to do the job properly, decided that it should be done at daytime where they're. Bomb site was the most effective. Step by step, the allies began sweeping back across the reaches of the Pacific. A terrible cost. We took to Rawa, Saipan, Kwajalein, Guam, Bougainville and the Philippines, setting the stage for the aerial assault in Japan itself at home. The United States had channeled its great energies and its vast technologies to produce in flood the goods of war. And now with our allies, our integrated sea, land and Air Combat team attack. No one in aviation believes that aviation alone. Won the War. We do believe that the war might not have been won. By ourselves and our lives, except that we had control of the air. The massive, intricate, highly trained combat team that America had put together at a stupendous cost dissolved almost overnight. A free people yielded to a free impulse. They demobilized their men and discarded much of their equipment. In the field of aviation alone, they had built an incredible 96,318 airplanes in the war year of 1944. Two years later, the production had shrunk to 1,669 planes, where the civilian aviation interest had turned to stunting and barnstorming at the end of World War One. Now the airplane had assumed the civilian role of a fast passenger and freight carrier. The network of airlines which had sprung up in the 20s and 30s was extended to every corner of the free world for engine transports of ocean spanning range speed millions of passengers across the continent and across the seas. The wartime DC-4 and constellation were followed by faster, farther ranging successors, DC Sixes, advanced constellations, Strato cruisers and such twin engine ships as the 2:02 and 3:40. In a time of spiraling costs, only, air travel grew cheaper. From fewer than 6000 passengers, the airlines had hauled in 1926. They quickly rose to where in 1952 they carried 24 million passengers, 12 billion passenger miles. The Wright Brothers vision was still the goal of virtually all men in aviation, such as Robert Gross, whose industrial team produced the Constellation Series. Of course, it's obvious too. I guess everyone that. The airplane has been preponderantly military since its start many years ago. But there are signs, particularly in the last few years, that perhaps it wasn't always going to be ponderously a military weapon. Man and science must go forward, hand in hand. It can do a lot of things, this airplane, it can bring hundreds of millions of people throughout the world in intimate contact with one another. And contact with one another means understanding. And understanding in the end means peace. Sharon and Taron? with connections to southern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Far East will all passengers kindly brought their Clipper through Gate number 10. Partly in the wars closing hours, Germany had employed guided missiles brutally but without decisive effect. Simultaneously, England and Germany had put a few airplanes in the air, powered by a radical new type of engine, the jet turbine. The jet became really important in aviation. The accumulated engineering know how that this country had built up with its piston Asian equipment suddenly became very much less important. This event was really a great leveler in engineering background and potential for all countries and we have to start over again to try to regain the supremacy which we had in World War Two. In their March across Germany, Russia had seized Germany's military tools and designs and many of the engineers who were developing the jet. The Russians now increasingly saw the Allied victory, in which they had been a partner, as largely their own. The Western world was either bled white by the war or demobilized. Russia and its Communist allies alone kept their armies intact. Their whole creed was one of forts, and they began imposing that force on Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Russia's abrupt belligerence forced this country's attention upon the air power we had let melt away. For the third time in little more than a generation, the nation sat about building a modern air arm. This one to be shaped around the fantastic speeds the gas turbine engine provided. Then, in 1948, when the Russians sealed off the land corridors leading to western Berlin, the United States, England and France countered with the famous Berlin Airlift. From their bases outside the Iron Curtain, a steady stream of airplanes flew night and day, supplying West Berlin's 2,000,000 residents with food, fuel and medicine. Finally, the Communists capitulated and reopened the land corridor. Then they sent their minions into war in Korea. There, the United Nations chose to stand and fight. It was a strange, bitter, circumscribed war. The Air Force's prime striking weapon, its Strategic Air Command, was ruled out of bounds. The first sustained jet combat in history took place in a quadrangle of Sky up to 40,000 feet above the Earth, but always South of the Yalu River. Russia said aloft to first rate jet fighter the make. Only the air forces Saber from the United Nations array of fighter planes could match it. It was a war in which transport airplanes flew 7000 miles to deliver material and to return sick and wounded men. And it was a war in which the helicopter, with its ability to fly standing still and land anywhere, did a multitude of jobs, among them transporting literally thousands of wounded from the battlefield to rear area hospitals for prompt surgical attention. Under the impact of Korea, the nation had begun again to turn out modern aircraft in quantities. Monday, Peel, the chairman of the Industries Association that we as an aircraft industry are present time, turning out about 14,000 aeroplanes. At the moment, we are a healthy industry. We have to pour back tremendous amount of funds into research and development funds that we earn when we make the aeroplanes. This is a very healthy thing. It creates competition. We want competition. That's Kindelberger, whose organization built the Saber pictures, the sky 10 miles high as man flies. The speed approaching that of sound. Today we're flying at very great speeds and at very high altitudes. As a matter of fact, up in the area at which a lot of the fighting is being done, around 50,000 feet, we have a different world. It's a thin, blue, dark blue air. The the sun doesn't shine so brilliantly because there's nothing to reflect it. There's no plan of reference for the pilots, such as hills or clouds or sky and such an atmosphere as this. Even a bomber is hard to see. And the trouble? That we are facing future is not the sound barrier. We know how to fly through that now. The thing that is bothering everybody is the thermodynamic barrier. The air flowing over an airplane at these very high speeds by friction will heat up the surface of the airplane. As a matter of fact, if we go Mach #2, which is twice the speed of sound at sea level, the surface of the airplane will get hot. Very rapidly and will stabilize at about 500 degrees, since ordinary aluminum alloy loses half its strength by 350. Degree. And that even titanium and steels begin to give trouble at 500 and 600 degrees, it's obvious that we are in a great deal of difficulty in the future. There also are many things like hydraulic fluid. We don't know how to make hydraulic fluid that won't boil away at this temperature. We don't know how to make packings it won't seize at this temperature, or bearings, or lubricants. In fact, if the bubble with whichever body is familiar gets soft, in which it loses its shape and disappear at 300 degrees. So we have ahead of us a great deal of research. And a long, long time of trouble before we're going to be going anything like the speeds at which our. Magazine supplement writers seem to think we are ready for tomorrow. Modern test pilots who fly at Sonic speeds and incredible altitudes take an equally factual view of their calling. Tex Johnston sums up his philosophy after putting the J-57 powered B-52 through its paces. After 12 years of testing. 10 years in the. Jet fuel. Involving a first jet airplane to fly in this country, the P-59. The first rocket airplane to fly in the United States, the X-1. Incidentally, the first airplane to fly faster than the speed of sound. The B-47, the B52 I believe all the more, and the two old sayings first that one test flight is worth 1000 expert opinions and the other one for the Flyboys. The altitude above you and runway behind you will never do you any good. Chuck Yeager, the first man to fly through the Sonic Barrier, and Bill Bridgeman, a test pilot who has flown almost twice the speed of sound and has piloted a plane at an altitude of 79,000 feet, discussed their calling in language peculiarly their own. Certainly enjoyed the work. Safeway to get into that kind of plan. It's a heck of a lot safer takeoffs. And yeah, and you burn so much fuel when you take off before you get up to the altitude where the airplane could drop you. And I actually, I personally think that's the most fun involved in a flight is when the guy cut you loose, you're just hanging there for a minute. Just like on a roller coaster, yeah. You're pretty close to stall, too. When you came out of there, weren't you? Yeah, with the 29 we stalled at around 2:40 indicated with full fuel load. So one time I remember Jack Ridley, we had a release. Failure and he dropped me out at about 180 indicated and I didn't know which end was up for a while. Well, I I know it's on the skyrocket that when we first dropped that you could kind of feel the stall by watching the boom out there. The boom began to shake while she was on the nipple. I don't know where to see it bend see it. Well, I see it oscillates. And so the airplane has evolved from the rights whose first flights at Kitty Hawk were at speeds hardly faster than an athlete can run, to speeds today, where the bridgemans, the Yeagers and the Johnstons traveled faster than a bullet. Horizons far beyond today's achievements still beckoned. Your name Sir? Frank the law. Have you flown before? Yes, I've flown before.
