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First Government trials at Fort Myers, 1908.

FROM KITTY HAWK TO KOREA IN MILITARY AVIATION

THE history of military aviation began on August 1, 1907, when an Aeronautical Division was established in the Office of the Chief Signal Officer of the Army "to study the flying machine and the possibility of adapting it to military purposes." Four years earlier, on December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright had given wings to the world. By 1907, the Army was ready to take a long, hard look at the military potential of their new-fangled "Flying machine."

The first Aeronautical Division consisted of a single officer, two enlisted men, and no equipment. Indeed, the first military airplane was no acquired until August 2, 1909. The first fatal accident in aviation history caused the delay.

The Army contracted with the Wright Brothers for a military airplane on February 10, 1908.  Specifications required that it carry two men in continuous flight for an hour at not less than 40 miles per hour. The Wrights built the machine and delivered it to Ft. Myer, Va., for the tests. On September 9, 1908, Orville Wright flew the airplane for almost 58 minutes at an altitude of 100 feet and carried the first Army passenger, Lt. Frank P. Lahm. On September 12 he established a world record by flying one hour and 14 minutes at an altitude of 250 feet. But on September 17, with Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge aboard, one of the two propellors clipped a wire supporting the vertical tail, and the airplane plunged to the ground. Selfridge was injured fatally. Orville Wright sustained multiple injuries.

But Orville was back at Ft. Myer in the summer of 1909 and on July 30 climaxed a new series of tests with a 10-mile round-trip flight between Ft. Myer and Alexandria, Va. His speed averaged slightly more than 42 miles per hour, a performance which earned a bonus $5,000 and boosted the purchase price of the airplane to $30,000.

It was not until March 3, 1911, that Congress voted its first sum specifically for military aviation. The amount was $125,000. That appropriation permitted the purchase of new equipment for training for experiments in reconnaissance, an aviation school at College Park, Md., and tests of firing machine guns from an airplane. And little did Lieutenant Alfred A. Cunningham realize that day in 1911 when he took his "flying contraption" off the ground to become the first Marine flyer, that some day, through his and other Marines' efforts, an entire hard-hitting tactical Marine air striking force would come into being. 

In the years prior to America's entry into World War, the air arm grew slowly, but steadily. By September 30, 1913, there were 23 officers and 91 enlisted men on air duty and the force had grown to 15 planes. in 1914, Congress elevated the Aeronautical Division to an Aviation Section. Although still under jurisdiction of the Signal Corps, the Aviation Section was authorized 60 officers and 260 enlisted men. And Congress further provided $600,000 for development.

World War I brought the airplane sharply into focus. When the united States entered the war in April, 1917, the Aviation Section had 78 flying officers, slightly more than 1,000 enlisted men, and 55 airplanes, divided among seven squadrons. By war's end, the United States had 45 squadrons in France with 767 pilots, 1,481 observers, 25 gunners and 740 airplanes assigned to the various armies.

Naval aviation dates itself from the day the Navy first submitted a requisition for an aircraft, May 8, 1911. In that same year the first Navy officers were assigned to a civilian - Glenn H. Curtiss - for flight instruction. After tentative beginnings, Naval aviation gathered enough momentum so that it was a detachment of Marines who were the first American aviators to go overseas in World War I fully trained and equipped.

In 1919 the first trans-Atlantic flight was accomplished by Navy pilots flying Navy NC-4 flying boats. The following years brought many accomplishments and the development of many specialized aircraft.

At the time of Pearl Harbor, the Navy had six aircraft carriers, beginning with the conversion of the Langley in 1922.

From the early days of World War I Marine flying was limited to bombing German submarine pens and railroad marshalling yards. In the "banana wars" of the 1920's Marine-developed divebombing came into being. World War II saw Marine aviation grow to a proportion undreamed of by the Cunning-
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NATIONAL AIRCRAFT SHOW
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