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the Service. Loening also supervised the redesign of a Burgess tractor biplane, incorporating several improvements. With this machine Lt. T. F. Dodd set a new distance and duration record on February 14, 1913 when he flew from San Diego to Los Angeles and Burbank and return in four hours, forty-three minutes. On March 12th Lt. Byron Jones established a 2-passenger endurance record with this plane at San Diego of seven hours, five minutes.

Loening was also able to get considerable flying during test work with the young officer pilots, as well as some on a Curtiss flying boat from Francis "Doc" Wildman. He gave lectures on airplane design and construction to the young officers. Those compositions were later published as a book entitled "Military Aeroplanes" which sold well through World War I, and was adopted as an official text book by the Army, Navy and Royal Flying Corps.

Loening left his Army position in July, 1815, to organize and manage the Sturtevant Aeroplane Company of Boston, Massachusetts. There he designed and developed both monoplanes and biplanes with fuselages of steel frames and sheet-metal covering using Sturtevant aircraft engines. Some of these planes were sold to the Navy. The company became a source of supply in World War I.

Loening resigned from Sturtevant in mid-1917 to form his own company, the Loening Aeronautical Engineering Corporation. New York, with factory facilities in Long Island City. He obtained a Navy contract at once to build a special small monoplane, called the "Loening K," powered by a Lawrance 30 hp., engine.

In March, 1918, he contracted to build a 2-seat fighter for the Army Air Service. Called the M-8, an externally strut-braced monoplane powered by a 300 hp., Hispano-Suiza engine, the first plane was completed in late July. On test it had a top speed of 146 m.p.h. and proved to be one of the best fighter planes developed during World War I. A second example was built with improvements and both planes were delivered to McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio, for official government tests. Before acceptance trials were completed, however, the Armistice prevented their use in combat. Later the Secretary of War awarded Loening the Distinguished Service Award for the design and construction of this plane.

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Transcription Notes:
last paragraph, "Hispano-Sui??" if you can read that please amend