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[[image No. 135 - black & white photograph of Burgess Company data plate]]

[[image No. 136 - black & white photograph of Roy Waite sitting in a biplane]]

[[image No. 137 - black & white photograph of Roy Waite (L) and Arch Freeman (R) standing in front of biplane]]

[[caption]]The famed Burgess Company, Marblehead, Mass., was a pioneer licensee of Wright machines, later developing their own hydroplane designs. Roy Waite (136) was important early test pilot for the builder, and an exhibition flyer. He and Arch Freeman, right (137), used plane to bomb Boston Harbor forts and ships, May, 1912. [[/caption]]

Henry Roy Waite

"We decided on a little joke so we went out in our flying machine and dropped our bombs on warships New Jersey and Rhode Island. Then we went over and plastered the forts along Boston harbor."

Roy Waite and his friend Arch Freeman played their little joke on May 19, 1912. The bombs were flour, and adding insult to high shenanigans, they attached a note inside each bag asking "What would you have done if this contained nitroglycerin?" They scored direct hits on all their targets, only to learn from naval officers that aerial bombing was for eggheads.

Roy is the kind of New England Yankee that is pure joy: he operated his own flying school, barnstormed from Canada's border to the Carolinas, taught children to fly--"my 16-year-olds were the first-rate students"--designed airplanes, including a 1914 flying wing, and was a mechanic-test pilot extraordinary, associated with such luminous pre-World War I companies as Burgess, Sturtevant, and Loening.

He was the first aircraft inspector for the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics and holds Department of Commerce Flying Certificate No. 1. After World War II, when the Wrights's original Kitty Hawk craft was returned to the U.S. from England, guess who lovingly tucked it together for hanging in the Smithsonian?

"Well, I used to fly 'em," Roy says, Yankee-like.

[[image - small drawing of a propeller]]

Henry Roy Waite: born Roxbury, Massachusetts, October 3, 1884.

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