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The Sport of Wings
Air Racing And Air Shows Have Helped To Create An Airmindedness That Has Pushed The Aircraft's Technical Evolution As Common Carrier And As Weapon
 By Douglas J. Ingalss
From Pegasus 

 The airplane was born at Kitty Hawk in 1903, but nobody believed it. There was little public enthusiasm for flying or little recognition of the pioneer birdman- except for calling him a "flying fool"- until the early birds got together in Los Angeles and held America's first air meet. That was the beginning of a new era.
 For the first time, crowds gathered in grandstands and watched daring airmen like Glenn Curtiss, Roy Knabenshue, Charlie Hamilton and Lincoln Beachey put their winged machines through exciting and thrilling maneuvers around a closed course. The scene was Domiguez Field just outside Los Angeles; the date was January 10-20, 1920. The flyers had a field day, setting new world's records every time they took off. The result was a stemming of aviation interest in Southern California which in later years would bring there a concentration of the great aircraft industry. The same year at Belmont Park race track, Long Island, society's 400, and thousands of others not in the Bluebook, witnessed another great international aerial tournament, one which climaxed a series of pre-World War I shows. Ever since, air racing and air shows of one kind or another have helped create an air mindedness that in turn has pushed the technical evolution of the airplane both as a common carrier and as a weapon.
  Boost TO Research 
 The "Sport of Wings" stimulated aeronautical research and development in the lean post-Kitty Hawk years, when our military couldn't raise enough money even for the gasoline to run its own tests and experiments. It also gave us during the lull between the world wars the Speed Kings and Air Heroes who kept alive public interest in aviation. Even today, air racing is an effective way to educate the public in our conquest of the skies. National air shows at home and abroad have become the showcase of winged progress, and proof of their import is evident in the fact that it isn't os hard today to "sell" airpower and the need for money to maintain air supremacy. It wasn't always this way.
  The guys with guts- the Roscoe Turners, Steve Whitmans, Benny Howards, Jimmy Doolittle's- and a long list of those who risked their lives and those who lost them, roaring around the pylons- were really the test pilots who proved many of the innovations that make the modern airplane. It was, as somebody puts it, "a damn big thing when they pushed the speed barrier from 200 to 300 miles per hour."
  The racing pilots did that. The guys who flew for the sport of it and the prize money. They made it easier for the test pilots of today to climb into sleek, bullet-like machines and fly faster than sound. You die just as quick when a homemade racer blows up to 275mph as you do when a $5,000,000 experimental jet explodes over Muroc. And live a lot longer once somebody else has straightened out the early question marks.
  That's what air racing did. It helped us unscramble a lot of unknowns and proved the real worth of a lot of innovations- the high horsepower engines, the supercharger, retractable landing gears, wing flaps, the streamlined engine cowling. In truth, between 1929 and World War II, the National Air Races did for aviation what the 500-mile annual Indianapolis classic has done for the automotive world. Until we had the great multi-million-dollar test facilities for air research and development, the air races were this country's proving ground for wings.
  Historical View
 Let's look at what happened. At how air racing got that way, its impact on public interest and the changes that have come through the years. 
  In 1920, Joseph Pulitzer, desiring to stimulate commercial advancement and public interest in aviation, offered a 
  The Air Line Pilot