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[[??]] the more daring pioneers lost their lives to the airplane before the association came into being.

It was five years after the historic Wright flight that Glenn Hammond Curtiss built and flew his first airplane at Hammondsport, N. Y., and he quickly became the foremost competitor of the Wrights, both in flying and in the manufacture of airplanes. Curtiss built and raced motorcycles. The use of the light Curtiss engines of from 3 1/2 to 40 horsepower in airships, however, led him naturally into the new field. His first plane, built in 1908, was the "June Bug." In 1909 in another plane he won the International Air Race at Rheims, France, setting the first world record at 48 miles an hour. The next year he won $10,000 for a flight from Albany down the Hudson River to Governors Island in less than three hours. Curtiss died in 1930.

Exhibition Fliers

About 1910 there were demands for exhibition flights in many parts of the country, attracting young men who wanted to get into this thrilling game. Some built their own planes, copying Wright or Curtiss designs as best they could. Others took brief lessons at the flying schools and bought planes, some learning to fly under assumed names to avoid objections from friends and relatives. Others taught themselves to fly, and it is amazing how many survived this peril.

Frank T. Coffyn, now with a helicopter manufacturer in California, was one of the first fliers taught by the Wrights at Dayton in 1909. He flew under the Brooklyn Bridge in 1912, and during the winter of that year was a familiar sight flying from the ice-caked waters of New York Harbor in his Wright seaplane.

A year after the French aviator, Louis Bleriot, crossed the English Channel in 1909, an American, John B. Moisant, made the first flight from Paris to London. The Moisant International Airport at New Orleans is named for Moisant, who was thrown from his plane and killed while flying over that city the last day of 1910.

U. S. Army Lieut. Frank Lahm was taught to fly by the Wrights in 1910. Now General Lahm, he is retired and living in Ohio, although he is still active and is a former president of the "Early Birds." Other Army officers taught by the Wrights were Maj. Gen. Benjamin Foulois, now retired in New Jersey, and the late Gens. James E. Fechet and Henry H. Arnold.

Harriet Quimby, a serious minded editor of Leslie's magazine, took flying lessons in 1911 at Moisant's flying school in Long Island. Her Aviator's Certificate was the first issued by the Aero Club to an American woman. Less than two weeks later, John Mol-

In Texas, the [[??]] [[Stinson?]] became famous in 1913 when four members of that family learned to fly. Eddie, who became a manufacturer of airplanes, was killed when his plane ran out of fuel while flying over Chicago; his brother, Jack, lives in New York. The two girls--Catherine who was the third woman to get her certificate, and her sister Marjorie--put on aerial exhibitions that rivaled anything done by male pilots, plus some variations of their own. Catherine flew a specially built small plane so frail and rigged so loosely that onlookers would try to dissuade her from flying it. When a control cable got too slack, she would tie a knot to shorten it.

Ruth Law, now a serene resident of San Francisco, took flying lessons from a 16-year-old boy in Boston in 1912. After a few hours' instruction, she gave exhibitions all over the country. Flying a Curtiss biplane rigged with Wright controls (she learned on a Wright, but preferred the faster Curtiss), she made a one-stop flight from Chicago, landing in New York on Governors Island with only a pint of fuel remaining.

First woman pilot on the West Coast was Alys McKey Bryant, whose exhibition pilot husband was killed in a crash. Alys took up where he left off and not only gave exhibition flights but also became a competent mechanic, working in World War II as a licensed aviation mechanic. She is now a Government employe in Washington.

Blanche Stewart Scott, now in Rochester, N. Y., was another daring woman pilot who made the headlines in 1914. A diminutive blonde, she put on performances equaling those of the best exhibition pilots.

Cross-Country Trip

First to fly across the country was Calbraith Perry Rodgers. With a big unlighted cigar clamped between his teeth, he took off from Sheepshead Bay race track in Brooklyn Sept. 17, 1911, in a Wright biplane.

After forty-nine days Rodgers reached Los Angeles, having practically rebuilt the plane which cracked up in unprepared fields on most of his landings. This exploit won him $50,000. A few weeks afterward, while stunting over Los Angeles, he crashed to his death.

During an air meet in St. Louis in October, 1910, ex-President Theodore Roosevelt was a passenger with Arch Hoxsey, of the first Wright exhibition team. Hoxsey was killed while stunting over Los Angeles in 1911. On Oct. 13, 1913, William S. Luckey won THE NEW YORK TIMES $1,000 prize in a race around Manhattan Island, fifty-one miles in fifty-three minutes.

Of the exhibition pilots, none was more daring and spectacular than Lincoln Beachey. In 1905, when he was 17, he learned to fly an airship. Two years later he flew over New York and landed in Battery Park. Taking off he ran against a building and fell into the river. In 1911 he learned to fly a Curtiss airplane and soon became more skilled than his instructor. 

This youngster flew his airplane as never intended by its maker. Looping, spiraling, diving close to the ground, he represented the most reckless aspects of stunt flying. He flew over Niagara Falls and down within a few feet of the rapids. In 1914 New Yorkers saw him at Brighton Beach race track competing with Barney Oldfield.

Race-Track Stunt

As they roared around the dirt track, Beachey would touch Oldfield's head with the front landing wheel, just to show he had command of the situation. He always won. While stunting over the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco in 1915, his new plane fell apart at 2,000 feet. In those days there were no parachutes.

In the lean years following 1919, many pilots who returned from the war made a precarious living by carrying passengers on "joy rides" in order to buy fuel and oil for their motors and enough food to stay alive. Prominent as a group of dare-devil barnstormers was the team known as the "Black Cats." In the group were movie star Reginald Denny and Jack Frye. 

Other exhibition groups included Walter Varney's "Flying Circus" and Ivan Gates' "Flying Circus." They toured the country, landing in cow pasture and risking their lives to thrill the spectators at country fairs. Several aces of World War I are still engaged in aviation, among them E. V. Rickenbacker, now president of Eastern Airlines, who downed twenty-six enemy aircraft, earning the title "Ace of Aces."

A pineer pilot who still manufactures airplanes is Glenn L. Martin, who built his first plane in 1905. After six years of exhibition flying in the United States and Canada, he began manufacturing airplanes in an abandoned church in Santa Ana, Calif. He made headlines in 1915 by taking Mary Pickford for her first flight. At his factories near Baltimore, Md., he builds transport airplanes, flying boats and jet bombers, and is a leading producer of guided missiles and rockets.

Lieut. Walter Hinton, U. S. N., now living in Long Island, piloted the first airplane to cross the Atlantic, the Navy-Curtiss NC-4 flying boat, in May, 1919. A month later this feat was eclipsed when two British pilots, Alcock and Brown, flew non-stop from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 1/4 hours.

Igor Sikorsky built a helicopter in 1910, but, in his words, "it was not successful." He turned his attention to airplanes, and in 1913 built and flew the first multi-motored airplane, a huge biplane bomber for the Russian Army, using four engines mounted on the lower wing.

Sikorsky came to the United States in 1919 and made multi-motored airplanes and record-holding flying boats. He was first to obtain a helicopter license from the Government. The Sikorsky Division of United Aircraft Corporation, which he directs, is a leading producer of military and civil helicopters.

G. M. Bellanca, who still manufactures airplanes in Delaware, came from Italy in 1913. He built a little 45-horsepower monoplane and taught himself to fly at Mineola. 

building, most in a second hangar-like structure about a block away. The vision of a National Air Museum to memorialize the development of aviation is still a vision. Paul E. Garber, head curator of the National Air Museum, and offials of the Smithsonian, however, have organized exhibits as best they can in the cluttered Institution buildings. There just is not enough space to centralize all the air displays. One visitor remarked the other day:

"If the planes hanging from the ceiling of the Smithsonian were any heavier, they would pull the roof down."

New Building

It is not pulling the roof down that worries the curator of the museum and the Smithsonian. Instead, what is uppermost in their minds is the problem of raising a new roof on a building to house the National Air Museum itself. Congress created the museum in 1946, expanding on an idea advanced by the late Gen. Henry H. (Hap) Arnold, wartime commander of the Air Force, for the establishment of an Air Force Museum. Congress initially authorized $50,000, and later more, for the planning of the museum, to which was transferred the Smithsonian air collection.

Last year, a site for the museum was finally obtained when the General Services Administration provided twenty-one acres of Government-owned land at near-by Suitland, Md. Mr. Garber is not entirely satisfied with it, although present indications are that eventually the museum will be built there.

The complaint against the site is that it is too far from the center of things in the nation's capital. But the Smithsonian took advantage of the offer and since has completed six temporary prefabricated structures for storage purposes.

Because Congress has not yet authorized funds for the actual building of the museum, and because of the pressures for Government economy, Mr. Garber and his associates have been forced to revise onward their initial plans. They are now thinking in terms of a smaller structure where they would rotate various exhibits from storage to display and vice versa.

wright Memorial

But they still have plans to build a special building, about one hundred feet in diameter, to re-create and memorialize the Wright Brothers' flight. The Kitty Hawk would be "taking off," the floor would be sand from the North Carolina site, and in the background would be pictures and bas reliefs.

The acquisition of the Kitty Hawk caused quite a headache 

Story of Langley

Actually Dr. Langley failed in his attempts to fly in October and again in December, 1903, several days before the Wright Brothers' success. But because of later evaluations made for the Smithsonian by Admiral David W. Taylor and Dr. Joseph Ames that the aircraft was "capable" of sustained flight and failed only because of launching errors, the controversial sign was placed beneath the Langley aircraft.

Dr. C. G. Abbot, secretary of the Smithsonian, sought to end the controversy, however, and in 1928--the same year the Kitty Hawk went to London--renewed a plea that the Wright plane be given to the institution. At the same time he ordered removal of the disputed legend.

In October, 1942, Dr. Abbott allowed Orville Wright to make a detailed statement of why he thought the Langley aircraft was not capable of flight in its original form. This, coupled with the fact that the legend had been removed, seemed to end the controversy, and in 1948, on the forty-fifth anniversary of the historic flight, the Kitty Hawk came to the Smithsonian.

Once the new museum is built, Mr. Garber will not encounter any trouble in filling it. For, although the museum attempts to be selective rather than accumulative, so many aeronautical items have piled up that it will be an overwhelming job to pick out what should be kept.

The present display shows some thirty-seven famous aircraft in addition to the Kitty Hawk, among them the Japanese "Baka" used in suicide attacks in World War II; a group of World War I planes and the Bell X-1, the first plane to break the sonic barrier; the first plane to go around the world, the Douglas World Cruiser, and the nose section and cockpit of the Republic XP-84 "Thunderjet," used in Korea. There is "engine row" and "helicopter corner" and there are such things as scale models, flight clothing, and a collection Chinese kites.

Civil War Relic

The earliest original specimen in the collection is a valve from a balloon used in the Civil War for military observation. The latest acquisition is the Excalibur III which won the Bendix International Transcontinental air race twice, and holds, in addition, several other records.

The Air Force has some one hundred aircraft ready to give the National Air Museum, including the Enola Gay, the B-29 Super-fortress that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and some foreign-made planes. The Navy has twenty-five aircraft for display. Most of these planes have been put in storage.  

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Blanche Scott, above, one of the earliest women exhibition fliers, in what the casually dressed pilot wore in 1914.

First Lieut. Eddie Rickenbacker, below, top U. S. ace in World War I, and the French Spad with which in 1918 he led his storied Hat-in-the-Ring Squadron.

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prop aerial racer that he built and flew in 1908.

Glenn Martin, left built his first plane in 1905. In 1911 he set up a plane factory in California.

Brig. Gen. William "Billy" Mitchell, below, with a Curtis PW-8. He fought for a separate air force.

[[image]]
European, The New York Times, Associated Press, U. S. Signal Corps, U. S. Air Force

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