Viewing page 339 of 468

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

10  THE WASHINGTON POST
Wednesday, October 14, 1953

40 Pioneer Airmen in Helicopters Tour Wrights' Sand Dunes at Kitty Hawk

FLIGHT - From Page 1

Wright achieved man's dream of flight on December 17, 1903.

The same steady wind, which brought the Wrights here from Dayton to experiment with their gliders and powered aircraft, blew today over Kitty Hawk as the founders of avaiation made their pilgrimage.  

In today's group were veteran pilots who were taught to fly by the Wrights.  The group also included some of the world's top aircraft designers whose early work was made possible by the Wright experiments.

Brig. Gen. T. DeWitt Milling USA (ret.) of 2230 California st. nw., recalled how Orville Wright taught him to fly in 1910. "He maintained that anybody who could ride a bicycle could fly an airplane." said the 66-year-old airman.

General Milling, who got his first flying lesson on a Monday and soloed five days later, said "I never would have lived through those early days of flight if it hadn't been for Orville's instruction.  He knew more about flying than any man alive."

Also here today was Grover Loening, 65, of New York, America's first graduate areonautical engineer who went to work for Orville Wright in 1911 and helped him manufacture a plane a week.  "Orville used to reminisce all night about his early experiments, here," recalled Loening.

Igor I. Sikorsky, who attempted to build his first helicopter in 1909 in Russia, was among today's pilgrims.

The brilliant designer who quit Russia for the U.S. in 1919, watched in evident satisfaction as two Coast Guard helicopters, which he designed, took the pioneer airman on short hops over Kitty Hawk for a bird's-eve view of aviation's most sacred shrine.  

Others here made up a "Who's Who" of early aviation.  Englands first flyer, Sir Alliott V. Roe, was on hand, as was Canadas first pilot, J. A. D. McCurdy.  Italy, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Mexico, Portugal and Holland sent their early airmen.

Four DC-3s brought the early pilots her. The aviators spent three hours touring Kitty Hawk, then lunched at nearby Nags Head.  There they met A. W. Drinkwater, the telegrapher who flashed word of the Wrights' feat to an unbelieving world, and Henry Moore, Norfolk newspaperman whose story about the first flight was scoffed at when it first appeared.

Wednesday the pioneers will be received by President Eisenhower.  

The climax to this year's obervance of the golden anniversary of powered flight will be a four-day celebration here starting December 14.  For the event the Wright brothers' "original hangar and work shack will be reconstructed and a replica of the first Wright plane will be flown at the exact anniversary moment - 10:35 a.m., December 17.