Now, These Were Brave Men!

Can you imagine flying back then?  This was the world's first military plane:

It was 1908 and the Wright Brothers had been trying to get the military to buy a plane since 1905.  Finally, the Board of Ordnance and Fortification and the U.S. Signal Corps put specifications out for bid.  Cleverly, the specs were written in such a way that only the Wright Brothers could build it!  The contract was for a quantity of one, if it met all the flight tests, etc., for $25,000 plus a bonus if the aircraft exceeded speed and flight time.  It did, and the final cost to American taxpayers was $30,000.

During flight trials on September 18, 1908 there was a propeller malfunction, a crash, and the first fatality ever in an airplane.  Orville Wright was seriously injured in the accident, also, but as soon as he recovered, trials began again at Ft. Myer, Virginia.  The final test was a cross-country flight of 10 miles with a passenger. This flight also served as the official speed trial for the plane.  The specifications required a minimum of 40 mph; they averaged 42.5!  Mission accomplished!

The Army purchased it that year, used it to train pilots in the fall of 1909 and in 1910, then donated it to the Smithsonian Institution in 1911 after acquiring other aircraft.  Designated Signal Corps No. 1 by the Army, it is generally referred to as the Wright Military Flyer.  That means that the Smithsonian has had this airplane over 100 years!!  It certainly looks brand new to us!

Billy Mitchell followed as the famous World War I airman.  After the war, he was the one that convinced the military that naval vessels were dangerously susceptible to aerial attack.  He demonstrated this fact by leading a group of Army bombers to sink the captured German battleship Osfriesland.

Then, in May of 1927, Charles (Lucky Lindy) Lindbergh became the first person to fly around the world solo.  (Well, almost solo.  There was this fly that got trapped in the cockpit with him that he talked to and that helped to keep him awake!)  His plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, is on display in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.   Over the next five or six years, he made many more historic flights all over the world.  Lindbergh also flew fighter planes in World War II in the Pacific theater.

Robert Goddard invented and launched the first liquid fuel rocket in 1926.  In 1942 the German Messerschmitt became the first true operational jet plane.  But it wasn't until the Russian's launched Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1 in 1961 that man flew the first spacecraft.  Just think:  in only fifty years we went from the first military plane barely able to lift off the ground and travel 10 miles to rocketing into orbit! Amazing!