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1913 New England baked beans probably have never received greater notoriety. Baked Beans comprised the first bundle of cargo which was delivered as Air Parcel Post, and this was back in 1913, on January 13th. Harry M. Jones, in a Wright B flyer, covered a route from Boston to New York carrying the beans for the Governors along the way. A very long time was required to make the Air Force a separate arm of the military services, as we all know. As a matter of fact, it had been 34 years since an attempt was first made to separate the air arm. This first attempt was on the part of Representative James Hay of West Virginia, when he introduced H. R. 29728, which proposed a separate Aviation Corps. The bill failed to pass, largely through the influence and instrumentation of several of the officers then in the Aviation section of the Signal Corps. This happened on 11 February, 1913. Visionary men were not to be held down, however, in spite of the hardships and handicaps imposed when trying to overcome conventionalism and the status quo. One such brilliant example of foresight was the Langley Field Aerodynamic Laboratory project which was inaugurated by the appointment for an advisory committee on 13 February, 1913, by the regents of the Smithsonian Institute. In recognition of the special hazards and particular dangers of flying, Congress authorized the first flying pay on 2 March, 1913. This authorization provided fro 35 percent over base pay for officers on aviation duty. Of course, the finished product could not compare with the wonderful photo maps of our modern flying cameras, but it was a start in the right direction nevertheless, when Lt. W. C. Sherman, riding with Lt. T. D. Milling on a nonstop cross-country flight from San Antonio to Texas City, Texas, made the first aerial map from a plane on 31 March, 1913. It was, as a matter of fact, quite a legible production. In a little more than a year's time, the Army altitude record for flying was almost doubled, when on 13 April 1913, at San Diego, California, Lt. S. H. McLeary set a new Army altitude record of 8,400 feet in a Curtiss plane. This was 3,726 feet higher than the record established by Lt. H. H. Arnold the year before. The Federal practice of registering and licensing aircraft first came about as the result of a bill introduced by Mr. Boise Penrose in the Senate on 21 April, 1913. [[checkmark]] Pictures were taken form the air to prove it. On 27 April, 1913, cameraman Robert A. Duhem, riding as passenger with Robert C. Fowler, Flew from Panama City, Canal Zone, to Cristobal, from ocean to ocean, across the Isthmus of panama, nonstop, in 57 minutes. This was a memorable occasion because it was the first seaplane flight in Panama, and the first passenger-carrying flight in Central America. The first of a series of events which were later to set off a powder keg of heated discussions and animosities was inaugurated by Didier Masson who, while flying for Obregon, began a series of air bombing raids against Mexican Federal gunboats in the Guaymas Bay in the Gulf of California, on 10 May, 1913. [[checkmark]] A new duration and distance record for two men was established by Lts. T. D. Milling and W. C. Sherman when they flew 220 miles from Texas City to San Antonio, and remained aloft for 4 hours and 22 minutes, on 28 May, 1913. The heyday of pleasure flying around the Great Lakes area might have had its inception the day that Beckwith Havens established the first long-distance cruise in a flying boat, when he flew 885 miles on the Great Lakes on 8 July, 1913. 109
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