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25
[[photo - Ralph Barnaby and Felix Roche in Aeronca plane]]

24
[[photo - Ralph Barnaby beside his glider]]

[[caption]]
Ralph Barnaby beside his glider in a Lakehurst, N.J., Naval Air Station hangar (24), prior to drop-away from USS Los Angeles, Jan. 31, 1930 (26).  In Dayton, Ohio, Barnaby sits at controls of original Aeronca, with Felix Roche (25), son of plane's designer, Jean Roche, May 9, 1929, prior to a test flight.
[[/caption]]

[[photo - Ralph Barnaby in glider]]
26

Ralph Stanton Barnaby

"I went to Lakehurst, N.J. to help supervise the installation.  You feel better about that sort of thing when you can see and touch it yourself."
  The installation worked, [[italic]]Death-Defying Spin! Lt. Barnaby Launches Glider from Dirigible "Los Angeles" at 3,000 Feet[[/italic]], one wire service reported, January 31, 1930.  The concept was simply enough: the U.S. Navy thought gliders might be used as scouting units for aiding certain types of mooring operations, rather then using a man parachuted to earth from the craft.  The selection of Ralph Barnaby was a logical one: he had designed and built his first successful gliders more than 20 years before, and only a few months prior to the [[italic]]Death-Defying[[/italic]] assignment, was awarded the first U.S. Soaring Certificate on an August day at South Wellfleet, Mass.
  As a young Navy officer, Barnaby had also "lucked out" with a wide variety of delicious assignments, from expediting construction of the famed NC-4 hydroplanes to working with construction of Loening M-80 amphibians.
  "But I am most proud of an assignment that began years before the [[italic]]Los Angeles[[/italic]] effort, and lasted years later.  I served on the Army-Navy Aircraft Standards Board from 1923 through 1937.  It was a thankless job that demanded Army nuts fit Navy bolts and that all our nation's military aircraft use standard lubricants."  No one will ever know how this eased our burden in the early days of World War II.

[[image - illustration of propeller]]

  Ralph Stanton Barnaby: born Meadville, Pa., January 21, 1893.