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trophy for closed-course competitions. It was the first posted at the air meet held at Mitchel Field, Long Island, under the direction of the Aero Club of America. With that event, air races were underway.
  Through the twenties, the winged contests were usually expensive operations. They ran from three to 10 days, and several cities assumed the host role. Financing was furnished by civic groups in Cleveland, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Spokane. During this early period there were various types of racing, including participation by flying teams of the Army Air Force, the Navy and the Marines.
  In 1921, the races were in Omaha and in 1922 in Detroit. The 1923 air meet, held in St. Louis, was the first show to carry the name, National Air Races. Its three-day program included a number of special events in addition to the Pulitzer race. The "On-to-St. Louis" derby, open to civilians only, was won by C. S. ("Casey") Jones, who flew the 900 miles from Garden City, Long Island, New York, in 13 hours, 20 minutes.
  In 1924, the National Air Races went to Dayton, with a program of events and demonstrations by service planes and civilian flyers designed to honor the home city of the Wright Brothers. The following year they were held in New York, and in 1926 they were invited to be the feature of the celebration in Philadelphia. By this time the races were so well established that cities vied with invitations.
  Spokane, Washington, was awarded the 1927 races, which were marked by 12 events, including transcontinental and sectional air derbies. Winner C. W. Holman flew from Roosevelt Field, New York, to Spokane in 19 hours, 42 minutes, 27 seconds.
  The 1928 races at Los Angeles in nine days attracted an attendance of over 300,000. New planes for commercial aviation were introduced, as well as Army and Navy "echelon" formation flying. 
  In 1929, the National Air Races moved to Cleveland with with a 10-day show. Here the group of civic and industrial leaders who provided necessary financial and managerial support continued their interest in the shows each year through 1939, when the races were suspended by World War II.
            Cleveland, Home Of Races
     Cleveland became the home of the National Air Races. Carrying on the tradition of the Schneider and Pulitzer trophies, the Thompson Trophy Race evolved into the national symbol of high-speed flight.
    More than a half million people attended the races in 1929. Doug Davis of Atlanta, Georgia, flew his low-wing Travel-Air at average speed of 194.90 mph to beat both Army and Navy fliers in the free-for-all race. Women flyers were entered on a par with men for the first time. For five and six hours at a time the foremost pilots of the nation, flying the best planes industry could produce, performed for spectators. Among them were Lindbergh, Doolittle, Al Williams, Freddy Lund, Doug Davis and Army and Navy squadrons. 
   It was a decade of speed, with racing pilots making headlines and hero stories. Records were broken each year as the pilots raced cross-country, competing for the famous Bendix Transcontinental Trophy. As the homemade 
             14th Biennial
              Convention
        The ALPA Convention will be held
        at the Shoreland Hotel, Chicago,
              November 5-9 
jobs took the pylons in the Thompson, the airplane's speed was pushed beyond the 300 mph barrier. There were crashes and deaths. But through it all the races achieved something: they brought out the ingenuity and inventiveness that helped make the airplanes as we know it today. 
   As General of the Air Force H. H. ("Hap") Arnold said in Cleveland at the 1939 National Air Races, "This is the great test of man and machine. IT has been a proving ground in the sky." Shortly after, the races went to war and their builders and pilots with them. Some of the planes became the prototype of our first-line aerial fighters. 
                Post-War Revival
  When the war was over, the races were revived at Cleveland in 1946. But they were not the same. They had lost their individuality. The planes were different. They were not the product of a handful of mechanics and pilots, who fathered them from blueprint into reality. They were the "war babies," the Corsairs, the Mustangs, the Thunderbolts-- for the most part the fighter planes of World War II. Not racing planes anymore, but machines -- big, powerful , expensive, with no secrets.
  With the little racer went the glory the guesswork and prayer, the win-by-God-or-go-broke spirit that kept the racing pilots of yesteryear in the game. True, they put on a spectacular show as they roared by the grandstand. They broke some records. But it was all pretty cut-and-dried. You measured time and the winner by a slide rule and horsepower, not ingenuity and a checkered flag. "The only thing that these planes prove," a veteran race pilot observed, "is how much guts a pilot has to kick 'em wide open."
                  The Jets Take Over
  The big propeller-driven planes gave way to jets, and the major events, the Thompson and the Bendix, became strictly military affairs. There was no more closed-course racing. Even the name was lost; the races turned into the National Aircraft Show.
  Oddly enough, the military, which fostered the childhood of the air racing back in 1924, witht he event at Dayton, Ohio, was the first to conceive and bring into being the idea of a national air show. It began in 1945, when the Air Force staged its great Air Fair at Wright Field in Dayton. There were fly-bys and some aerial display, but the heart of the event was exhibition -- planes and equipment on parade, static display on the ground. 
  Since that time, on an annual basis, the National Aircraft Show has been held in Cleveland, Detroit, Dayton and Philadelphia. This year Oklahoma City plays host. Sponsored by the aircraft industry and the military services, the show is still held under the auspices of the Cleveland National Air Races, the same group who brough the air races into national prominence in 1929.
  Today the air show is an event designed to demonstrate to the public the technical advances made by aviation. It is the "Big Show" that parallels the national displays of Russia and England. Aviation progress still soars upward, but the "Sport of Wings" is almost dead.