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00:00:00The End
00:00:31The End
00:00:56At the turn of the 20th century in Dayton, Ohio, Hawthorne Street looked much as it does today.
00:01:03Men and women are still living. You remember how in the years 1900, 1901, 1902, 1903, the quiet, slow-spoken
00:01:13Wright brothers came walking down Hawthorne, back again from their journeys to Kittio.
00:01:17And how with that bent, alert, probing way of theirs, they strode past the homes of Vance the harness maker,
00:01:25Pahoo the stone cutter, Wellborn the wagon maker, Wolfram the carriage trimmer.
00:01:30Year after year, they came quietly home to No. 7 Hawthorne Street.
00:01:36But once within the house, Reserve left them.
00:01:39With their father, Bishop Milton Wright, their sister Catherine, or the young girl Carrie Grumbach listening unobtrusively, the Wright brothers
00:01:48studied aloud, discussed exhaustively, argued in detail.
00:01:54And at last conceived the principles that were to open the skies to the navigation of men.
00:02:01Around the corner from Hawthorne on 4th Street, Orville and Wilbur Wright tested not only their ideas, but they examined
00:02:08the theories of other men who had explored the possibilities of flight.
00:02:12The Wrights, Cayley, Lillianthal, Chanute, Langley.
00:02:17The Wrights devised methods of measuring the accuracy of aeronautical theories, including their own.
00:02:23The home was their discussion hall, the shop, their laboratory.
00:02:28Both today are gone from Dayton, moved as monuments to the Wright memory to the museum at Greenfield Village in
00:02:35Dearborn.
00:02:36Discussion hall, laboratory, and testing devices such as their first wind tunnel had their plates.
00:02:41But the Wrights at once had recognized an axiom of aviation that still endures.
00:02:47Proof must come in the air.
00:02:50On this windswept beach in 1900, 1901, and 1902, they tested gliders they had built.
00:02:57They taught themselves to be pilots of a high order.
00:03:00They were critical men.
00:03:02But at last, their 1902 model pleased them.
00:03:05They flew it farther and with better control than any other glider that man had ever devised.
00:03:12They came back from Kitty Hawk in 1902 with the knowledge that they had solved flight's paramount secret, control.
00:03:19And in the spring of 1903, they designed a four-cylinder engine and fashioned two propellers.
00:03:25When they next went to Kitty Hawk, they flew.
00:03:30On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made man's first four control flights in a powered airplane.
00:03:39That day, they lifted the world into a new dimension.
00:04:00What the Wrights had achieved at Kitty Hawk barely evoked passing attention in a nation whose people were absorbed with
00:04:06the problems of a dynamic new age.
00:04:08There were other, less celestial wonders closer at hand.
00:04:12The automobile.
00:04:14The telephone.
00:04:18The motion picture.
00:04:24But at number seven, Hawthorne Street, December 17, 1903 was a momentous day.
00:04:30The young girl who was then the Wrights housekeeper, Carrie Grumbach, remembers.
00:04:34I remember the telegram when it came, that they had flown, that they had done what they said they would
00:04:40do.
00:04:40They always did as they had planned.
00:04:43The telegram from Kitty Hawk had a special significance for the mechanic who worked in the Wrights bicycle shop, Charlie
00:04:48Taylor.
00:04:49Of course, I was greatly pleased to know what it had been accomplished.
00:04:54But at that time, it didn't seem to be anything wonderful at that.
00:05:00I started on repairing bicycles back in the 80s.
00:05:08And then I later went to Dayton and built bicycles for the Stoddard Manufacturing Company.
00:05:17And they were just starting up in the bicycle business.
00:05:20Then I got acquainted with the Wrights and I built bicycles for them.
00:05:26I did all the repair work while they went down to Kitty Hawk to try out their gliders.
00:05:32All they needed was power to keep on flying when they designed the motor.
00:05:39I made all the different parts in the motor.
00:05:43I even made the clank shafts.
00:05:45I made it out of a solid block of steel, about 32 inches long, six inches wide, and inch and
00:05:54five-eighths thick.
00:05:56Cut it right out of the solid block by drilling holes and knocking out large pieces out of it.
00:06:02And then turning it up in the lathe.
00:06:05The motor itself, from the time I started until I had it ready for tests, was six weeks.
00:06:12Fifty years ago, I can remember as though it was yesterday almost.
00:06:17There was not a complete indifference to the Wrights discovery.
00:06:21A small group of Americans were laboring to further the art.
00:06:24And in Europe, where the airplane's military potential was quickly realized, a fresh wave of enthusiasm for aviation followed the
00:06:32Wrights' success.
00:06:33In France, Blaireau, Farman, and Briquet were flying airplanes of their own design.
00:06:39The Englishman Curie and the Brazilian Santos Dumont, most of whose experiments took place in France, also captured the imagination
00:06:47of Europe with successful flights.
00:06:48The Wrights had offered to demonstrate their airplane to the United States Army shortly after their first successful flights.
00:06:56The Army declined, preferring to develop its small fleet of balloons as an air arm.
00:07:02Oddly, it was a young balloonist lieutenant of the Army who finally was instrumental in obtaining a chance for the
00:07:08Wrights and their airplane, Frank P. Long.
00:07:11After four long years of failing to recognize the Wrights, finally, in December of 1907, the Board of Ordents and
00:07:19Fortifications granted the interview to Wilbur.
00:07:23At once, he inspired their confidence.
00:07:27This led to a contract in February of 1908 between the Wright brothers and the Signal Corps, in which they
00:07:37agreed to furnish an airplane that would fly 40 miles an hour, carry two persons, remain in the air for
00:07:43one hour, and, strange to relate, was to have some kind of a device by which, in case the motor
00:07:50stopped, it could be landed without crashing.
00:07:52In the summer of 1908, Oroville Wright brought to Fort Myer, Virginia, the airplane that was to fill their specifications
00:08:00of the contract.
00:08:01Day after day, we watched him fly around and around the field in his tuning up flights.
00:08:07And finally, on the 9th of September, he broke the world record by staying in the air for over one
00:08:12hour.
00:08:13On landing, he came to me and said, would you like to go up?
00:08:16You can guess my answer.
00:08:20And I made my first flight in an airplane that day with Oroville Wright, 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
00:08:27Lieutenant Law became the first military officer ever to fly in an airplane.
00:08:31Eight days later, tragedy struck.
00:08:34On a flight at Fort Myer, Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge was killed, Oroville Wright injured.
00:08:41Shocked but not deterred, both the Army and the Wrights moved to improve the airplane.
00:08:47In the summer of 1909, both Wilbur and Oroville Wright came to Fort Myer, this time with a new airplane.
00:08:55It fulfilled the specifications, including an hour's flight, which is my good fortune to ride with Oroville for an hour
00:09:04and 12 minutes.
00:09:05Another young Army Lieutenant, Benjamin Folloy, had a chance to fly in the Wright plane at Fort Myer.
00:09:11On the day following the endurance test with Oroville Wright and Lieutenant Lahm,
00:09:18Oroville, with a quiet little grin on his face, invited me to be his guest on the crucial and final
00:09:26cross-country and speed test.
00:09:29The grin on Oroville's face was for my benefit, particularly as I had been responsible for laying out the course
00:09:36between Fort Myer and Alexandria, Virginia,
00:09:40and there was not a landing field on the entire out or homebound course except Fort Myer drill ground.
00:09:49On July 30th, we took off on the final cross-country and speed test.
00:09:57Shortly after we straightened out on the course for Alexandria, Oroville, with this same little grin on his face,
00:10:05told me that if he had to land anywhere on the route, that he'd pick out the thickest clump of
00:10:12trees he could find and land on top of them.
00:10:14Fortunately, the little engine that we had at the time carried us all the way through without any difficulty,
00:10:22and we finally landed back at Fort Myer drill ground with three world records, cross-country 10 miles, altitude 600
00:10:33feet, and speed 42.5 miles an hour.
00:10:38The United States Army had an airplane. The need now was for pilots.
00:10:42There in the fall of 1909, under Wilbur Wright's destruction, Lieutenant F.E. Humphrey of U.S. Engineers and myself
00:10:50were taught to fly,
00:10:52and at the end of some three hours were soloed and told we were pilots.
00:10:57So in 1909, the military airplane was mated to the military pilot.
00:11:03Meanwhile, all over the world, aviation pioneers encouraged by the Wright brothers' flights were hard at work.
00:11:09The principles of flight were now widely known, and designers were applying them to many types of aircraft.
00:11:16Glenn Curtis, Glenn Martin, and the Canadian J.A.D. McCurdy were designing and flying airplanes in competition and for
00:11:23exhibition.
00:11:24In Europe, the airplanes of Bleriot, Polom, Farman, and de Havilland were demonstrating obvious advances in both speed and range.
00:11:32And in Russia, Igor Sikorsky was taking his first steps into the age of flight.
00:11:37And I remember very, very well the early interesting period in France in 1909 and 1910, when the very first
00:11:49attempts were made to push aviation from the purely original experimental flying to some kind of successful practical achievement.
00:12:01I have seen Bleriot coming in the same factory to purchase his motor, on which a few months later he
00:12:08crossed the English Channel.
00:12:10At that time, I had my share of failures with the first helicopter, which was a fine machine, only it
00:12:18couldn't fly.
00:12:19Glenn Martin remembers an episode of his pioneering days.
00:12:23I've just been reading an old postcard sent by our family doctor to my mother, dated September 30th, 1910.
00:12:35This is at a time when I just began to leave the ground in a flying machine.
00:12:41And it says, for heaven's sake, if you have any influence with that wild-eyed, hallucinated young man, call him
00:12:50off before he is killed.
00:12:52Have him devote his energies to substantial, feasible, and profitable pursuits, leaving dreaming to the professional dreamers.
00:13:01For a dreamer, Glenn Martin was attracting a remarkable group of clear-thinking young designers as workmen.
00:13:07The first to join him was Donald Douglas.
00:13:10I guess it must be getting old, because somehow it becomes fun to reminisce.
00:13:21Well, my first memory of things in aviation was seeing the first right airplane demonstrated for the Signal Corps in
00:13:321908 in Fort Myers, outside of Washington.
00:13:36So I took the streetcar and one thing and another and got out to Fort Myers.
00:13:40Well, there she was, as I had seen her picture, the old right pusher.
00:13:46And there were Wilbur and Orville.
00:13:50And there was that old launching device that kind of looked like a guillotine, and they had the airplane perched
00:13:55up at the starting part of the track and the weight all ready to go.
00:14:01And I remember well, I believe it was Wilbur, going out and holding up a bit of dust and dropping
00:14:08it to see that there wasn't a bit of wind.
00:14:11And then, as I recall, it was Wilbur that got into the machine with, I guess it was Colonel Lomb.
00:14:17And they pulled the old latch and down this little wooden track it went with those funny old props, batting
00:14:24around at apparently a pretty slow speed, and off she went.
00:14:27One of the first pilots was Roy Nobbinshue, who was a balloonist even before he became an airplane pilot.
00:14:32This gentleman I'm pointing out right back of the pilot was Walter Brookins.
00:14:41Walter was a great pilot.
00:14:44His judgment was uncanny, but he was very temperamental.
00:14:49As a matter of fact, he, Arch Hoxie, and Ralph Johnson was the three best pilots that the Wright Company
00:14:57had.
00:14:57And each one tried to outdo the other.
00:15:00My friend, Dick Ferris, remarked to me one time.
00:15:05He said, I have been an impresario.
00:15:09I've handled actors and prima donnas.
00:15:13But he says, these aviators start in where the other fellow leaves off.
00:15:18And he says, it's impossible to do anything with them.
00:15:20The ambitions of some designers went far beyond their skills.
00:15:24As Igor Sikorsky has said, in the history of aviation, there have been many contraptions which, to the good fortune
00:15:35of their inventors, failed to fly.
00:15:39They say, they say they are even the only one time waiting for their owners.
00:15:59They say, they are even the only one time waiting for their own life.
00:16:06Inventors of a high skill sometimes were deadly serious in demonstrating the utility man could expect from the airplane.
00:16:13Lawrence Sperry, whose contributions to the aircraft instrument field were momentous, puts a pre-war aircraft through its paces.
00:16:28All this ferment, however often it seemed to lack direction, was contributing in one way or another to the growth
00:16:35of aviation.
00:16:36The airplane was growing cleaner in design. Its horsepower was more dependable.
00:16:41The disparaging term, aeronaut, was giving way to aviator, a term of respect.
00:16:48Aviation was emerging as a science.
00:16:52A pioneer aeronautical engineer and educator, Dr. Jerome Hunsaker.
00:16:57Professional education in aeronautical engineering began in this country at MIT in the winter of 1913-14.
00:17:09This course was started by President McLaurin borrowing me from the Navy Department and supplying me with one assistant as
00:17:17staff,
00:17:18who was a recent graduate in mechanical engineering, Donald Douglas, from whom more was to be heard.
00:17:27The pusher engine of early planes had been replaced by the tractor engine installations, which allowed higher speeds.
00:17:34The Wrights were foreseeing these helpful aircraft devices, and other inventors, such as Elmer Sperry, were inventing and refining them.
00:17:42Here, a Curtis seaplane flies with the early Sperry automatic pilot.
00:17:52Almost without exception in the first decade of the airplane, the designers were pilots.
00:17:56They built, tested, and flew their own designs.
00:18:00The Wrights, Larry O., Santos Dumont, Curtis, Roe, Sikorsky, de Havilland, and Martin.
00:18:06At Glen Martin's, a band of engineers and craftsmen had gathered together whose names and time would be synonymous with
00:18:13aircraft designs of world rank.
00:18:16Donald Douglas, James H. Dutch Kindleberger, Lawrence Larry Bell, Alan Lockheed, John Northrup.
00:18:24The United States was the cradle of flight.
00:18:28Inventors of a high order had appeared.
00:18:31Our pilots were unmatched.
00:18:33First-rate designers emerged.
00:18:35Brilliant men specialized in the components of the airplane.
00:18:39But as a pioneer who specialized in aircraft horsepower, Frederick B. Rentschler summarizes.
00:18:44Prior to World War I, our most important contribution to aviation was the flight of the Wright brothers.
00:18:58From December 1909 to March 1911, thirteen months, the entire United States Air Force consisted of one officer myself, one
00:19:11civilian mechanic, eight enlisted men, and one airplane.
00:19:14The government at that time wasn't very keen about turning money loose for flying.
00:19:19I had the great appropriation of $150 allotted to me to take care of the airplane for the entire year
00:19:261910.
00:19:28January 1910, chief signal officer directed me to proceed to support Sam, Houston, Texas, to teach myself how to fly.
00:19:38On March 2nd, I made four flights, three good and one bad.
00:19:44The last one, I cracked up and put the plane in the shop for about ten days.
00:19:52After each crack up, I used to sit down and try to puzzle out what had happened.
00:19:56Then I'd write to the Wright brothers and tell them all that I thought had happened.
00:20:01They'd proceed to write back and tell me what I ought to have done.
00:20:05In other words, I expect that I'm about the only man living today who learned to fly by correspondence.
00:20:12Two air-minded young lieutenants shortly joined General Falloy, the one-man air force.
00:20:16They were Hap Arnold and T. DeWitt Milling.
00:20:20Looking back 42 years ago to March 1911, the month in which General Arnold and myself were ordered to Dayton
00:20:31to learn to fly with the Wright brothers,
00:20:34and to think of the plane that we used at that time and see the advance that has been made
00:20:40since,
00:20:40it seems incomprehensible that one man in his own lifetime could live through such progress.
00:20:48After our very brief period of instruction of about a week, two to three hours in order to learn to
00:20:57fly,
00:20:57we were sent to College Park, Maryland.
00:21:02We immediately started in to try to find some method by which we could develop from the standpoint of taking
00:21:10photographs,
00:21:11using the machine gun, dropping bombs.
00:21:15The air arm of the United States Navy began under equally apathetic circumstances.
00:21:20Naval aviator number three was Admiral John H. Towers.
00:21:24In the autumn of 1911, when I was quite a young naval officer serving aboard one of our battleships,
00:21:31I got the idea that I wanted to learn to fly, that naval aviation would amount to something for naval
00:21:39purposes.
00:21:40So I put in a request to the Navy Department.
00:21:42And they came back and quite frankly said that they didn't believe aviation would ever amount to anything.
00:21:49But if it turned out to be otherwise, they would consider my request.
00:21:54During that winter, Congress appropriated money for the Navy to buy three airplanes.
00:22:03So they were in it whether or not they wanted to be.
00:22:07And then they decided to select three officers to be taught to fly as part of the contract with the
00:22:14manufacturers of the airplanes.
00:22:16I was fortunate enough to be one of those three officers.
00:22:20The other two were Ellison and Rogers.
00:22:22I also became a very close friend of Glenn Curtis and was associated with him throughout his whole life.
00:22:31The man had an enormous amount of vision.
00:22:34He had already conducted, in cooperation with the Navy, tests of landing an airplane on a platform, on a cruiser,
00:22:42and also of taking off.
00:22:45But he had in his mind then the idea which later developed into the powerful carriers that we have today.
00:22:51The airplane now had official recognition, both from the Army and the Navy.
00:22:56But it was a cautious acceptance.
00:22:57The time-forged armament still held sway.
00:23:01When the fledgling Army fliers experimented with a primitive bombsite and a Lewis machine gun,
00:23:06installed an aircraft at College Park, Maryland,
00:23:09they landed and foresaw whole battles that someday might be fought in the air.
00:23:14The War Department promptly pierced that bubble.
00:23:17An official spokesman pointed out with finality that the Army had airplanes for just one purpose,
00:23:23reconnaissance.
00:23:38From a pistol shot at Sarajevo, the first of the great modern world wars exploded.
00:23:44And almost overnight, all of Europe was engulfed in conflict.
00:23:58Once the great armies had met head-on, the conflict resolved itself into a desperate struggle to hold this plot
00:24:05of ground, this foot averted.
00:24:10Military analysts called it positional warfare.
00:24:16But the foot soldiers knew it only as a war of trenches.
00:24:20A desperate fight for a waterlogged hole.
00:24:29Automotive power began to supplement the feeding, supplying and tending of troops burrowed in the earth.
00:24:34The tank made its combat appearance.
00:24:38But for many months, the First World War remained an earthbound conflict.
00:24:43The airplane was put to work, just as the U.S. War Department spokesman had prophesied,
00:24:49as observation and scouting craft.
00:24:53The source of peril lay in the artillery, machine gun and rifle fire, scourging the entrenched troops from across the
00:25:00wasted land.
00:25:01But in the air, Allied and German pilots often waved to each other as they passed on their observation missions.
00:25:08Then, instead of the courteous wave, the opposing pilots began exchanging pistol fire.
00:25:15Presently, the first crudely mounted machine guns appeared.
00:25:19Now, the frantic race of inventing, improvising, adapting and refining aircraft equipment began.
00:25:29Quickly, the Germans countered the hand-operated machine gun by installing upon their aircraft the invention of Tony Fokker,
00:25:36a machine gun synchronized to fire through the aircraft propeller.
00:25:42A paramount lesson that the Allies were to remember a generation later was being learned in air warfare for the
00:25:49first time.
00:25:50No design capable of still further development could be frozen.
00:25:58And countermeasures must be met by counter-countermeasures.
00:26:04It was becoming clear that no nation or race had a corner on inventive skill.
00:26:09While the single-engined airplane had been engrossing most designers, in Russia, Igor Sikorsky...
00:26:15In 1912, I decided that the time came to build a large machine with several motors.
00:26:22At that time, I was certain already that the future of aviation would be connected with fairly large aircraft.
00:26:30That the closed cabin, with its comfort, protection from wind and so forth, represent a must.
00:26:36In 13, I completed my first four-motored aeroplane, the Grand.
00:26:41The ship proved it a complete success. It flew quite well.
00:26:45The Grand's military successor, the Ilya Mormats, was the first four-engine bomber in world history.
00:26:52It struck time after time at the Central Powers on the Eastern Front.
00:26:57The internal combustion engine now became an instrument of intensive technical development.
00:27:03The first successful engine had not been developed until 1860.
00:27:06One of the world's foremost engine designers, Leonard S. Hobbs, recollects its history.
00:27:12It starts out, actually, with a little-known Frenchman by the name of Lenoir,
00:27:17who has never gotten the credit he deserved.
00:27:20He built and actually marketed the first internal combustion engine,
00:27:24and it was from his engine that the Wright brothers were able to build one.
00:27:28Of course, the early pre-war power plants are fairly well known, the Anzinis and the Curtis OXs.
00:27:35The First World War did mark a great advance in power plants.
00:27:40First, there were the Rotaries, the Clerges, the Gnome Rones.
00:27:44Then there was the Renault engine, which was a very good French engine.
00:27:49The British RAF engines.
00:27:51Toward the end of the war came the very beginning of what I think is the modern engine.
00:27:57First, there was the Hispano Suiza with its solid block and a valve arrangement,
00:28:04which is standard in a lot of engines to this day.
00:28:09Also, out of the First World War came a remarkable German effort, the BMW.
00:28:16Now, this engine is the first engine that I know of in all history
00:28:20that attempted to overcome the effects of altitude on power.
00:28:50The First World War
00:28:51Into a conflict in which European antagonists
00:28:54had been tempered by three years of savage battle,
00:28:56whose equipment had been perfected by the necessity of survival without regard to cost,
00:29:01the United States now plunged.
00:29:03It was the world's 14th ranking air power, with only 28 airplanes, 65 pilots,
00:29:10supplemented by 50 flying students.
00:29:13Its Navy combat air arm was even smaller.
00:29:15Its industry lacked integration.
00:29:18The nation that had allotted Benny Folloy $150 in 1910 for maintenance of that year's Air Force
00:29:24promptly voted $600 million to fulfill a plea by the Allies to have 5,000 airplanes
00:29:30and 4,500 pilots on the Western Front by the spring of 1918.
00:29:35When we entered the war, the country knew that the United States already had an industrial capacity
00:29:41double that of Great Britain, France, and Germany combined.
00:29:45We quickly realized that to supplement the meager aeronautical developments resulting from years of federal indifference to air power,
00:29:52we had to obtain licenses for the production of proved British and French airplanes and aircraft engines in our new
00:29:58factories.
00:29:59Our national mistake was the assumption that an instrument as dynamic as the airplane could be designed, tested, and developed
00:30:07overnight.
00:30:09Thousands of rookie pilots training in the United States and in England and France
00:30:13had an inspiring example of American air combat performance through the brilliant exploits of the Lafayette Escadrille,
00:30:20a team of American volunteers who had joined the Allied cause in 1916.
00:30:24But American performance had its hours of frustration.
00:30:28One of the first young pilots to see action in France with the 1st Aero Squadron was Oliver P. Eccles.
00:30:35We'd been equipped with a new type of French airplane,
00:30:39with a new and very much improved engines.
00:30:44These airplanes were assigned to us.
00:30:47The squadron had the strength of 18 airplanes.
00:30:50And we were assigned the mission of supporting one of the American divisions one afternoon in the attack.
00:30:58Our airplanes took off 18 strong.
00:31:01During the afternoon, all of the airplanes force-landed from engine failure.
00:31:07Fortunately, none of them were behind the enemy line.
00:31:10But out of the 18 airplanes that went out, none of them got back.
00:31:15The pilots of World War I made the term dogfight synonymous with their work.
00:31:21America's top ace, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker of the famed 94th Hat-in-Ring Squadron,
00:31:26reflects on the different approaches to combat of the pilots of World War I and the pilots of today.
00:31:32That individualism was possible because the planes were much slower.
00:31:38You'd stay in maneuver.
00:31:40Whereas today, it's impossible because of the tremendous speed,
00:31:45the difference of 100 miles an hour and six or 700 miles an hour.
00:31:51We had 150 horsepower.
00:31:53Today, if they haven't got 5,000 or 6,000 horsepower, it's no good.
00:31:58We had two little pop guns, .30 caliber, that would shoot sometimes 450 rounds a minute.
00:32:05Today, they've got six and eight .50 caliber guns that'll shoot 1,000 rounds a minute
00:32:11with a couple of cannon thrown in, 20 millimeter or 37 millimeter cannon,
00:32:18and then maybe half a dozen rockets that have terrific destructive power,
00:32:28all of which means that today the time element is so limited for a pilot in combat with an enemy
00:32:37that it's a matter of a fraction of a second.
00:32:41Today is a cockpit full of instruments and gadgets.
00:32:44It's pressurized. It's air conditioned.
00:32:46We had a gasoline gauge, an oil gauge.
00:32:50We had a tachometer or a revolution counter.
00:32:53Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't.
00:32:56And the fourth instrument was an aldometer that we could never rely on.
00:33:01The Navy's pre-war requests for funds to build up its air arm had been denied,
00:33:05and only a skeleton Naval Air Force existed.
00:33:08A Naval officer whose career has bridged two wars in aeronautics, Admiral DeWitt C. Ramsey.
00:33:15From the outset, the Navy's problem has been to bring aircraft into the mobile operating forces of the fleet.
00:33:26We may say that this had its start in World War I and the post-World War I period,
00:33:36when kite balloons were used from battleships and auxiliaries for gunfire spotting and tactical reconnaissance.
00:33:48The equipment was very cumbersome, and as hydrogen was used as the lifting gas for the balloons,
00:33:58we found that it was not a satisfactory measure of doing a naval job.
00:34:06So they were abandoned after a short, relatively short trial.
00:34:11The real beginning of naval aviation, let us say, took place in England,
00:34:16where during World War I, the latter part of it, the British converted two ships, the Furious and the Argus,
00:34:24and built into them the features which were desirable for aircraft launching and recovery.
00:34:30I happened to have been in England about that period and kept our Navy Department informed of the progress of
00:34:39the British in this field.
00:34:41As a result, the Navy embarked on an initial program of converting the old collier Jupiter into our first flat
00:34:53top, the Langley.
00:34:56In 1918, as the war began to move toward its climax, American aircraft equipment still had not entered combat.
00:35:03An intensive effort was being made to perfect the Liberty engine.
00:35:07Before the Liberty or any other aerial product of the United States designing boards could be put in action,
00:35:13the final critical offensive of World War I had begun.
00:35:17Millions of men pulled out of trenches to attack or retreat.
00:35:21Above them, to be sure, planes flew in bombing and strafing missions.
00:35:26Individual pilots whose names became legendary met in dogfights.
00:35:30Germany's Von Richthofen, Francis Fong, Canada's Bishop, Germany's Goering,
00:35:36and such American aces as Rickenbacker, Luke, Lufberry, Vaughan, Springs, Kindley, Landis, Schwab, Hunter.
00:36:12In retrospect, it might be something that we have seen here.
00:36:14said that aviation itself served a very small part in the result of the world war one conflict
00:36:28however it did prove itself that is that it was easy to recognize that with proper equipment
00:36:40at another later time aviation might become a real instrument of military warfare after the war was
00:36:51over a great many of american boys had been taught to fly but they didn't get to the front of
00:36:57course
00:36:57after the war was over they had nothing to do and there were a great many surplus airplanes and that
00:37:03is the period when you hear so much about of the days of barnstorming after the war with all these
00:37:09surplus airplanes a lot of the fellows who had been taught to fly then decided to go out and carry
00:37:15passengers and do stunts and regular exhibition flying principally at county fairs and state
00:37:21fairs and things of that sort both the army and navy air arms shortly were reduced once again to
00:37:28organizations hardly larger than the membership of a civic club yet in both services the men who
00:37:35remained were uniquely zealous advocates of their car almost to a man they realized they had only begun
00:37:42to explore the capacities that the airplane offered in size speed range and altitude performance a decade
00:37:50was dawning in american history that was to be known flippantly as the era of wonderful nonsense
00:37:56beneath its surface corruption its wild enthusiasms and its extravagant posturing history now has found
00:38:04that it was a time in which men in many fields of the arts and sciences were employing immense
00:38:09physical energy to attain goals of a sober work aviation had its share of such men the accomplishments
00:38:17of the 20s were presaged in 1919 by man's first flight across the atlantic ocean the nc4 a large flying
00:38:26boat whose development had begun during the war was chosen as the navy's pioneer pilot admiral towers points
00:38:32out for the ambitious task when the war was over the first one was just about completed
00:38:39so i proposed to the navy department that would go ahead the following spring and with as many of
00:38:46these aircraft as could be built by that time that the navy undertake to be the first to fly the
00:38:52atlantic
00:38:53luckily for me i was selected to command that expedition
00:38:57it's all history now two of the three airplanes uh landing at sea in very rough water
00:39:08was so damaged they couldn't make it but the nc4 made it from muflin to the azores to lisbon
00:39:16army pilots already had inaugurated airmail service on may 15th 1918
00:39:21a service that had been under discussion since 1910 william boeing who had entered aviation in 1916
00:39:28was instrumental in starting the first international airmail service on the north american continent
00:39:33in 1919 eddie hubbard and i took a flight up to vancouver bc
00:39:43on our return trip the postmaster at vancouver handed us a mail sack for delivery to the postmaster at
00:39:56seattle this was the first international mail ever carried by plane into the united states
00:40:04what real utilities the airplane actually offered were overshadowed in the public eye by its use as a
00:40:09spectacular stunting device throughout the pastures and primitive flying fields of the country
00:40:15the jenny could be bought for as little as 50 dollars and men who had flying in their blood
00:40:20preferred to scramble for the few dollars they could make risking their lives in exhibition flying
00:40:25rather than seeking out pedestrian jobs as one of them dick depew cheerfully said
00:40:31the greatest hazard in flying is the risk of starving to death
00:40:37the country's attention concentrated on a single man with a single theme
00:40:43brigadier general william mitchell who had had a distinguished war record argued that the mahan
00:40:48doctrine of sea power had been outmoded by the airplane and pleaded for a separate national air arm
00:40:54he contended in seeking a 60 million dollar appropriation for army air services
00:40:59or about half the cost of a single battleship that the united states could begin developing an air force
00:41:06which could hold mastery of both the air and the seas larry bell was still with glenn martin when that
00:41:12resulted in congress bringing about a test wherein one of the targets that we were supposed to sink
00:41:18or try to sink was the famous austere friesland the pride of the german navy which we had captured this
00:41:25ship
00:41:26was anchored about a hundred miles offshore and six of the martin bombers went out each carrying a two thousand
00:41:32pound bomb
00:41:34they paraded over the battleship and they dropped the six bombs and only one hit it and that was by
00:41:39mistake
00:41:40the rest were timed to detonate at a hundred feet below the surface and it practically exploded
00:41:46the austere friesland at least it ripped the bottom of the ship from
00:41:50bow to stern and the ship sank in four minutes
00:41:53the navy had already begun systematically to broaden the scope of its bureau of aeronautics
00:42:00many of its men whose views of the need for air power were not as vehement as billy mitchell's
00:42:05nevertheless already had envisioned carriers as the heart of future striking forces
00:42:10admiral ramsey was the navigator of the navy's first flat top the langley the langley had at best 14 knots
00:42:18maximum speed and that's all the wind speed she could generate and manufacture so we had to wait for
00:42:26adequate wind conditions to perform flight operations the nation's first large aircraft carriers the
00:42:32saratoga and the lexington were designed and were being built these great ships developing
00:42:39uh approximately 180 000 horsepower manufactured all of the wind that was needed in the absence of a surface wind
00:42:49for flight operations
00:42:53the nation accepted the airplane and tacitly agreed with its advocates but there was still
00:42:59no federal provision for long-range planning and procurement nevertheless a core of designers and
00:43:05manufacturers stayed with a business in the ceaseless drive to attain longer range and more reliable
00:43:12performance the airplane its engine its components and its instruments steadily were growing more complex
00:43:19but the primary goal was speed roscoe turner i have maintained ever since that i've been flying that
00:43:26there's only one reason for flying and that is speed it's 1910 curtis 49 miles an hour 1910 white 61
00:43:37miles an hour 1911
00:43:39wyman 78 miles an hour 19 and 20 mosley 156 miles an hour mon in 19 and 22 206 miles
00:43:52an hour
00:43:52and 19 and 25 doolittle 232 miles an hour jimmy doolittle a held for leather pilot whose own cold judgment
00:44:02was that he was essentially a technician
00:44:04these record flights have a very real meaning
00:44:10competition has perhaps always been the greatest stimulus to improvement
00:44:16and out of this competition came improvements
00:44:22improvements improvements improvements improvements that were improvements in the performance of
00:44:25aircraft and the safety of aircraft and those improvements were immediately applicable to the
00:44:30military and indirectly applicable to commercial aviation the ferment of the early 20s brought forth
00:44:36men who combined technical gifts with a skill of organization a few such men like chance vaught had formed
00:44:44their own companies and built successful airplanes
00:44:47others had served their apprenticeship with aviation's early pioneers but now they were branching out on
00:44:53their own dutch kindleberger recollects a small episode that launched an enduring company even in the 35
00:45:00years that i've been messing with it myself there have been vast changes particularly technically
00:45:07i can remember very distinctly when at the martin company in 1920
00:45:13don douglas who was then the chief engineer left to come out to california to start his own business
00:45:19i helped him pack we packed up from his office about oh two ordinary condensed milk cartons full of data
00:45:28in those two cartons we put everything that was known and printed
00:45:32and some of it wrong about the science of aviation engineering today you couldn't pack into this room
00:45:42the index of such technical information let alone the subject matter machine began to get complicated
00:45:48and from there on came the specialists a great many great men have contributed to aviation purely as
00:45:57specialists sparing one of the greatest colonel clark who devised one of the first good airfoils
00:46:07sam haran came along on his cylinders and his fuel and then frank mock with his carburetion devices and
00:46:13later fuel injection frank colville with his propeller our earliest propellers were all wooden propellers
00:46:19but they had several shortcomings they were subject to atmospheric troubles and they twisted out of
00:46:27shape in various climates and they were also quite thick so that the high speed at which propeller tips
00:46:35operated they were losing efficiency one of the things which we did to overcome this was to develop a
00:46:44metal propeller which first was a drop forged aluminum alloy blade being very much thinner than the wooden ones
00:46:52the efficiency was maintained in better conditions and also they were quite stable in various atmospheric conditions
00:47:01sam haran began working on aircraft engines as early as 1909 and shortly went to the royal aircraft factory in
00:47:08england
00:47:08i came to this country in 1921 and for the next five years was engaged in air cooled cylinder development
00:47:18it was really the air cooled engine that made fuel development so necessary the first move was to put
00:47:24tetraethyl lead in the existing gasoline later the air force got the idea of adding the component
00:47:34that has the high uh the high end of the octane scale to the gasoline and that eventually led to
00:47:41a
00:47:41hundred octane gasoline frank mark the carburation and fuel control specialist our carburation work
00:47:48has always had to be a good bit like that of the wright brothers in the respect that we could
00:47:53get a little
00:47:54guide from the textbook the automobile carburetor of course was designed to operate on the level the aircraft
00:48:00carburetors have to climb dive even fly upside down also they have to go up an altitude where the air
00:48:07is
00:48:08thin mock hobbs sperry clark caldwell herron the singular devotion with which these men and scores of
00:48:15other specialists pursued their particular fields leads h.m jack horner whose own specialty of aircraft
00:48:21production combined the fruits of all their labors to say that heritage of research
00:48:29development background work that goes into aircraft has continued throughout the whole existence of
00:48:37aircraft and the great improvements that have come there too
00:48:42after that with flight becoming a little bit more common
00:48:47i think it's important to realize the fervor with which those individuals
00:48:52did carry on their work it was a passion with them then midway in the 20s came two events that
00:49:00turned the course of american aviation sharply upward first the government adopted the recommendations of
00:49:07president coolidge's morrow board these called for a sustained aircraft procurement program
00:49:13built on the foundation of a privately operated and technically competitive aircraft industry
00:49:19although both military airmen and technologists were convinced that the airplane long before had
00:49:24outgrown its function as a scout the bulk of our aircraft still consisted of observation planes
00:49:31now new more powerful engines began to emerge for advanced aircraft which both services had developed
00:49:39the nation moved rapidly from a third-rate air power to international leadership
00:49:45the second event was the successful dream charles linberg made come true
00:50:01in his single engine ryan monoplane linberg had flown the atlantic non-stop to parents
00:50:07two weeks later carrying charles levine as a passenger clarence chamberlain flew the atlantic
00:50:13and landed in germany first of all we were trying to beat glenberg away and second we had to keep
00:50:18our plans a deep dark secret because we had overheard mrs levine say if i thought my charlie was going
00:50:23in
00:50:24that airplane i'd burn it up we finally got away about six o'clock in the morning on the fourth
00:50:28of june 1927
00:50:31the first thousand miles to newfoundland was through with good weather the only trouble was we had headwinds
00:50:38and our tests on long island showed that we could fly for 40 hours with at 100 miles an hour
00:50:44well
00:50:44on the flight up to newfoundland we were only making 70 miles an hour and 70 miles an hour for
00:50:5040 hours is 2 800 miles it was 3 200 to land on the other side leaving the last 400
00:50:55to swim well
00:50:57fortunately the wind shifted after we left newfoundland and as you see we made it
00:51:02lindberg's lonely adventure gripped the imagination of the world as one of man's most dramatic
00:51:08achievements the nation turned from its casual cynicism to make the shy young pilot together with
00:51:14the airplane a shining symbol of the horizon still beckoning for conquest a vital factor in the
00:51:21ascendancy of american aircraft had resulted from the work of two companies concentrating on the
00:51:26intensive development of the radial air cooled engine in this country charlie lawrence was the
00:51:31first one to go into the air cool side and did some quite good work his products being eventually
00:51:40taken over by the wright company and it was really one of his engines after a couple of major designs
00:51:46and
00:51:46they were really major designs but one of his engines that powered the lindberg flight
00:51:53following this came one of the best of all of the power plant engineers george j made with his famous
00:51:59wasp and hornets which which set up a new standard these engines had built-in superchargers and just
00:52:07about all the modern features in fact they are fairly representative of today's engines along with this came
00:52:14another of the major developments in the in the power plant that is the turbo super
00:52:21supercharger the turbo supercharger was really quite a long time coming the french frenchman by the name
00:52:29of ratto had originally started to try and get it but it took the general electric company and dr moss
00:52:35to
00:52:35get this thing which made almost all the difference in the world the unusual engineering accomplishments
00:52:44of our american aeronautical industry began to bear fruit in the late 20s and early 30s from a military
00:52:56point of view for the first time our various types of combat planes were unmatched abroad moreover
00:53:07we found the solid beginning of commercial air transport i remember very well in one evening when linberg and i
00:53:17were sitting in a small restaurant in cuba which we reached on the as the end of a caribbean flight
00:53:24and
00:53:25using the menu for paper we made sketches of a transatlantic clipper that was back in 31 a few years
00:53:35later the
00:53:36transatlantic clippers have been produced created proved success and as at present we know that
00:53:43trans-oceanic flying is perfect routine perfectly self-evident part of our modern life jimmy doolittle
00:53:51pioneered transcontinental non-stop flights in 1922 i flew from pablo beach florida near jacksonville to san
00:54:02diego california a distance of about 2200 miles in 22 hours and 20 minutes in 1931 i flew from
00:54:16los angeles california to new york in 11 hours and 15 minutes that first flight was the first time that
00:54:24the continent had ever been crossed in less than one day second flight was the first time it had ever
00:54:29been
00:54:29crossed in less than half a day meantime the army and the navy air arms were making fast strides in
00:54:36developing aviation they were flying farther higher and faster the air corps was perfecting its concept
00:54:44of the bomber as a long-range strategic weapon in its exercises the navy was demonstrating the soundness
00:54:51of the carrier task force individual officers were exploring the use of new instruments and accessories
00:54:58and testing new theories to determine aircraft reliability two famous army pilots carl tui spots and ira
00:55:06acre flew seven days in 1929 without landing the question mark flight was an endeavor
00:55:13to use refueling as a means of keeping the plane in the air for a long time
00:55:20the driving uh uh inspiration behind it i believe was our acre on the uh course between uh san diego
00:55:29and
00:55:29uh burbank we passed over the home of mrs spot's uh father mother and every time he passed over uh
00:55:36she
00:55:37would take my uh oldest daughter who was then about six or seven out to see us go overhead and
00:55:43on the fifth or
00:55:44sixth day she uh pointed us out to uh tatty and said tatty there's your daddy up there he's been
00:55:49up in
00:55:49the air for five or six days five for five days don't you think it's wonderful and uh tally looked
00:55:56up and
00:55:56said said no i think it's dumb but the flight did prove that refueling was practical general acre
00:56:04remembers an incident that forecast the need for equipment which would permit blind flying
00:56:09in 1919 flying in the philippines from manila to stotzenberg our station at that time i ran into
00:56:16a typhoon and the rain was so heavy that i couldn't see the horizon i fell in a spin and
00:56:21only the fact
00:56:22that the manila bay was yellow and the rain was darker was i able to recover from the spin and
00:56:27fly home
00:56:29to my surprise i found for the first time that when you can't couldn't see you couldn't fly
00:56:34i described this to lieutenant longfellow later general longfellow in the second world war
00:56:38and we began some crude experiments by hanging a plum bob down on across the instrument board and
00:56:43by putting a carpenter's level on the linger on and got so that with these two aids we could fly
00:56:48through clouds through several thousand feet of cloud and that was one of the early days of
00:56:55instrument flying ten years after general acre's manila experience jimmy doolittle in association
00:57:00with the sperry company tackled the problem i made the first blind flight the first completely blind flight
00:57:06taking off under a hood flying a prescribed course and landing back under the hood without
00:57:13ever having seen out of the airplane
00:57:16this doesn't sound very important now but out of that came two instruments the artificial horizon
00:57:23the directional gyro that are today's standard equipment on every commercial airplane
00:57:29and every combat military airplane the chain of development led back to general acre
00:57:34during the first transcontinental blind flight bill keppner and i had a very practical but unexpected
00:57:40demonstration of the value of instrument flying my ship was a p12 with a hood over it and a similar
00:57:47ship of p12 bill followed behind as the safety pilot so that he could tell me to turn right or
00:57:52left to
00:57:52avoid obstacles or other planes in flight at one point he was giving me rather repeated instructions
00:57:58and i could tell by the water seeping into the under the cover that we were in heavy rainstorm finally
00:58:04he said hold your present course steadily i'm going to fly formation on you and four or five minutes he
00:58:09called on the radio again and he said we've come through the storm now and i can see again
00:58:14during that period of time you led us through because i couldn't see either
00:58:19the great depression had come the industry was hard hit but nevertheless new companies developed
00:58:26to meet the increasing complexity of the airplane and its growing use of metals electronics and automatic
00:58:31controls dutch kindleberger departed from douglas to take over north american companies were formed
00:58:38bearing the famous names bell fairchild northrop beach cessna a world war navy pilot leroy grumman
00:58:46left civil engineering to enter aviation we knew that a conventional airplane wouldn't get us an order
00:58:55we finally ended up with the design of the first military fighter with retractable landing gear
00:59:02for which we got a contract and which proved to be highly successful having the speed for our
00:59:08success of any current army or navy fighter of that time a pioneer aviation journalist earl findley once
00:59:17went to see the wright brothers contemporary thomas edison i asked if i could have a short interview with mr
00:59:23edison you had to get up awful close to him he put his hand up like this yeah i mr
00:59:30mr edison
00:59:32uh what do you think of the airplane oh airplane and this is after he'd been talking to farming all
00:59:40morning in the biplane never amount to a damn uh until they get uh they got to do it different
00:59:48they have to have something like a hummingbird go up and go this way and come back this way that
00:59:56way this
00:59:56way and come down he said and uh well i uh i tried it once it ain't easy
01:00:08and i got to doing something else but uh somebody's gonna do it but that's remain it the opposite side
01:00:16of speed namely the aircraft that could fly with no speed at all that could take off from any spot
01:00:23and
01:00:24would not be in need of an airport at all the 30s also were the years in which each summer
01:00:29fierce
01:00:29competition was held to determine the best of the airplane breed proof of the individual airplanes
01:00:35engines and pilots came in the national air races with thousands looking on the legendary pilots raced
01:00:43doolittle hazlip turner whitman levier kuhlbach newman fuller jacqueline cochran
01:00:51and flyers still flew against the clock across the continent across the seas and indeed around the
01:00:58world itself balkan post ganty bird hughes emilia airheart and wrong way corrigan as the hour swung
01:01:07late in the 30s the air races were curiously american for in europe and asia aviation was not a case
01:01:14of
01:01:15relatively puny efforts and some such as america was providing much of it from individual man and
01:01:20companies rather the vast resources of powerful foreign nations now were thrown behind the
01:01:27construction of air forces designed to subdue the world or to defend against such aggression
01:01:34in the united states under the impact of a depression congress had scrapped the moral board
01:01:39procurement plan and stopped providing appropriations for 1 800 military airplanes that had been
01:01:45scheduled on new year's day 1936 the army air corps had only 300 planes fit for war duty
01:01:53a year later we had dropped to sixth place among powers and air combat strength
01:01:58although our industry was judged to be technically at least 18 months ahead of foreign competition
01:02:07so
01:02:07the
01:02:07the
01:02:07the
01:02:08the
01:02:24¶¶
01:02:48Premier de Laudier lamented,
01:02:50If I had had 4,000 airplanes, there would have been no Munich.
01:02:54France had squandered a first-rate air power while she sat behind the Maginot Line.
01:02:58The British, too, had let the Axis powers outstrip them.
01:03:01Frantically, both countries turned toward the United States,
01:03:04aware that, in the very act of running hard to meet crisis after crisis,
01:03:09an emphasis had been placed upon research, experiment, and development,
01:03:13which gave the United States technically superior aviation equipment.
01:03:17So the free world turned to the United States,
01:03:20not only for airplanes, but all of those weapons embodying the modern arsenal.
01:03:25To expand its facilities, train workers,
01:03:28and to adapt its job shop operations to techniques of mass production took time.
01:03:34The tooling was still underway when Germany struck.
01:03:38Poland was shattered.
01:03:54Poland and Belgium were overrun.
01:04:04France succumbed.
01:04:06Poland was shattered.
01:04:08Poland was shattered.
01:05:05The
01:05:06And indeed, throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British Airmen, who, undaunted
01:05:17by odds, unwirried in their constant challenge of mortal danger, are turning the tide of war by their prowess and
01:05:28by their devotion.
01:05:29Never in the field of human conflict was so much erred by so many to so few.
01:05:40Now the stubborn British stood alone. Over Poland, Holland, Belgium, and France, Germany's Luftwaffe had demonstrated that the airplane was
01:05:49a vital weapon of modern offensive war.
01:05:52In the skies above England, the Royal Air Force now demonstrated that the airplane was a vital instrument of modern
01:05:59defensive war.
01:06:01The struggle in Europe shook America. A month after Congress had received a bill providing only 61 combat airplanes for
01:06:09the Army Air Corps for the following year, President Roosevelt called for a long-range production program of 50,000
01:06:16airplanes.
01:06:18America slowly mobilized its productive capacity. It began to draft its young men. It sought to train them with wooden
01:06:26guns, cardboard tanks, and mock airplanes until it could gear its productive capacity to build the real thing.
01:06:32The war spread. Germany seized Norway, turned on its momentary ally Russia, overran Greece, joined its partner Italy in Africa,
01:06:45and encouraged its Asiatic ally Japan.
01:07:09Galactia •
01:07:29Galactia
01:07:31Galactia
01:07:34Nothing could have convinced the people of America more surely of the bitter nature of modern war than the sneak
01:07:40punch that Japan threw at Pearl Harbor.
01:07:42The nation fell to work to expand its token battle forces and its production into a great tide of men
01:07:49and machines.
01:07:50To train men and to equip them required long months, particularly in aviation.
01:07:55Immediately after the president's pronouncement in 1940, licenses were given to the automotive group largely to assist in the production
01:08:10schedules which lie ahead.
01:08:12And nevertheless, until the end of 1943, the equipment which actually saw service on the various fighting fronts all over
01:08:27the world were furnished entirely by the aeronautical industry.
01:08:31Because it was a fact that it required 20 months to two years for the average automotive company to begin.
01:08:42With their momentum at full flood, the Japanese swept through the Pacific.
01:08:47Jimmy Doolittle and a little band of flyers carried the war home to them in a joint Navy Air Force
01:08:52operation.
01:08:53I've frequently been asked, what was the purpose and what was the effect of the first Tokyo raid?
01:08:59Well, the purpose was to take the war to Japan to show them that their island was not inviolate.
01:09:06The effect? Well, the effect was to cause them to divert some of their military strength that was needed in
01:09:13the South Pacific to the protection of the home islands.
01:09:18The actual damaging effect was very little.
01:09:22Our airplanes were on the Hornet.
01:09:25We were intercepted just after daylight on the morning of April 18, 1942, by Japanese surface craft.
01:09:35We took off immediately, proceeded to target, and all but one of the planes carried on to the coast of
01:09:43China.
01:09:43We carried one ton of bombs in each one of 16 airplanes.
01:09:47We dropped 16 tons of bombs on four or five different targets.
01:09:51When you realize that from the Marianas in the later stages of the war, B-29s were carrying as much
01:09:59as 6,000 tons of bombs in one operation,
01:10:02and dropping them on a single target, you realize how puny our effort was.
01:10:07Slowly, the nation began to regain control of the air and the sea lanes that it had lost in the
01:10:12Pacific.
01:10:13The first great victory was the Battle of the Coral Sea.
01:10:16Captain Thatch, one of the Navy's ablest fliers and tacticians, remembers that battle and the subsequent battle of Midway.
01:10:23If you're going to apply the principle of concentration of force, for example, you've got to work with other people
01:10:30and have a good system of teamwork.
01:10:33I think that's one of the reasons why an attack by a carrier-based air group is so effective.
01:10:42It's almost a simultaneous thing like a one-two punch in boxing.
01:10:47In the Battle of the Coral Sea, for example, the dive bombers and torpedo planes and the fighters came in
01:10:56almost simultaneously,
01:10:59but the enemy concentrated on the dive bombers.
01:11:02At the same time, that let the torpedo planes in, and they did most of the damage.
01:11:07On the other hand, in the Battle of Midway later, the enemy fighters concentrated on the torpedo planes, and the
01:11:16dive bombers came in almost unmolested.
01:11:19I could see them coming down like a huge waterfall, and there were practically no misses.
01:11:24They were the ones that did the job in the Battle of Midway.
01:11:26With its growing stream of trained soldiers, sailors and airmen equipped with improved weapons,
01:11:31the United States and her allies took the offensive.
01:11:35Rommel was driven from Africa.
01:11:38Sicily and Italy were invaded.
01:11:41From their bases in England, American bombers began to strike at the heart of Germany under the direction of General
01:11:47Spatz.
01:11:48Strategic bombing was one of the ways of winning the war.
01:11:53And our fighter operations, in a large measure, developed into covering operations for the bombers.
01:12:01In order to do that, we had to have the development that had taken place.
01:12:06Good radio, so the leader of the fighter outfits could not only talk to his own men, but be in
01:12:14communication with the bombers.
01:12:17And, in turn, get some guidance from ground control stations on the ground by radio.
01:12:25This resulted in a different type of fighting and a different type of operation.
01:12:29But it proved conclusively in World War II that the airplane had developed to such an extent that air warfare
01:12:41became a different war altogether than land and sea warfare.
01:12:47Wellwood Beale, a member of the team of designers who created the B-17, saw the airplane altered from a
01:12:54defensive to an offensive weapon.
01:12:56The conception of strategic air bombing was not fully developed at that point.
01:13:05Originally, for instance, the B-17 was built to protect our coast from an invading fleet, and hence it was
01:13:16called the Flying Fortress.
01:13:18But when we got to England, it was obvious that to use these bombers to the greatest advantage, that we
01:13:28would have to not only get the enemy's supply lines, but the places where he manufactured his military equipment.
01:13:39But the British thought it would be easier to do it at night, it would have much greater chance of
01:13:45success, and would be less vulnerable to enemy fighters.
01:13:50And they called their bombing saturation bombing.
01:13:53They dropped large numbers of bombs on a large industrial area.
01:13:58The Americans, however, decided that with the B-17 and the B-24, that they could pinpoint a specific target.
01:14:08For instance, the ball bearing factory at Swinefort.
01:14:12They, in order to do the job properly, decided that it should be done at daytime, where their bomb site
01:14:20was the most effective.
01:14:26Step by step, the Allies began sweeping back across the reaches of the Pacific.
01:14:50The terrible cost we took to Rawa, Saipan, Kwajalein, Guam, Bougainville, and the Philippines, setting the stage for the aerial
01:14:59assault on Japan itself.
01:15:00At home, the United States had channeled its great energies and its vast technologies to produce in flood the goods
01:15:08of war.
01:15:10And now, with our Allies, our integrated sea, land, and air combat team attacked.
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01:17:39No one in aviation believes that aviation alone won the war. We do believe that the war might not have
01:17:50been won.
01:17:51by ourselves and our allies, except that we had control of the air.
01:17:58The massive, intricate, highly trained combat team that America had put together at a stupendous cost
01:18:05dissolved almost overnight.
01:18:07A free people yielded to a free impulse.
01:18:10They demobilized their men and discarded much of their equipment.
01:18:13In the field of aviation alone, they had built an incredible 96,318 airplanes in the war year of 1944.
01:18:23Two years later, the production had shrunk to 1,669 planes.
01:18:29Where the civilian aviation interest had turned to stunting and barnstorming at the end of World War I,
01:18:35now the airplane had assumed the civilian role of a fast passenger and freight carrier.
01:18:40The network of airlines, which had sprung up in the 20s and 30s, was extended to every corner of the
01:18:46free world.
01:18:47Four-engine transports of ocean-spanning range sped millions of passengers across the continent and across the seas.
01:18:54The wartime DC-4 and Constellation were followed by faster, farther-ranging successors,
01:19:00DC-6s, advanced Constellations, strato cruisers, and such twin-engine ships as the 202 and 340.
01:19:08In a time of spiraling costs, only air travel grew cheaper.
01:19:13From fewer than 6,000 passengers the airlines had hauled in 1926,
01:19:18they quickly rose to where in 1952 they carried 24 million passengers, 12 billion passenger miles.
01:19:27The Wright brothers' vision was still the goal of virtually all men in aviation,
01:19:31such as Robert Gross, whose industrial team produced the Constellation series.
01:19:36Of course, it's obvious to, I guess, everyone that the airplane has been preponderantly military
01:19:44since its start many years ago.
01:19:48But there are signs, particularly in the last few years,
01:19:52that perhaps it wasn't always going to be ponderantly a military weapon.
01:19:56Man and science must go forward hand in hand.
01:19:59It can do a lot of things, this airplane.
01:20:02It can bring hundreds of millions of people throughout the world
01:20:05in intimate contact with one another.
01:20:08And contact with one another means understanding.
01:20:11And understanding, in the end, means peace.
01:20:26In the war's closing hours, Germany had employed guided missiles brutally,
01:20:32but without decisive effect.
01:20:34Simultaneously, England and Germany had put a few airplanes in the air
01:20:38powered by a radical new type of engine, the jet turbine.
01:20:42The jet became really important in aviation.
01:20:46The accumulated engineering know-how that this country had built up
01:20:50with its piston engine equipment suddenly became very much less important.
01:20:55This event was really a great leveler
01:20:58in engineering background and potential for all countries.
01:21:03And we had to start over again to try to regain the supremacy
01:21:09which we had in World War II.
01:21:11In their march across Germany,
01:21:13Russia had seized Germany's military tools and designs
01:21:16and many of the engineers who were developing the jet.
01:21:21The Russians now increasingly saw the allied victory
01:21:24in which they had been a partner as largely their own.
01:21:27The Western world was either bled white by the war or demobilized.
01:21:31Russia and its communist allies alone kept their armies intact.
01:21:36Their whole creed was one of force,
01:21:38and they began imposing that force on Poland, Bulgaria,
01:21:42Romania, and Czechoslovakia.
01:21:46Russia's abrupt belligerence forced this country's attention
01:21:49upon the air power we had let melt away.
01:21:51For the third time in little more than a generation,
01:21:55the nation set about building a modern air arm.
01:21:57This one to be shaped around the fantastic speeds
01:22:01the gas turbine engine provided.
01:22:04Then, in 1948,
01:22:07when the Russians sealed off the land corridors
01:22:09leading to western Berlin,
01:22:11the United States, England, and France
01:22:13countered with a famous Berlin airlift.
01:22:15From their bases outside the Iron Curtain,
01:22:18a steady stream of airplanes flew night and day,
01:22:21supplying West Berlin's two million residents
01:22:23with food, fuel, and medicine.
01:22:25Finally, the communists capitulated
01:22:27and reopened the land corridor.
01:22:30Then, they sent their minions into war in Korea.
01:22:34There, the United Nations chose to stand and fight.
01:22:37It was a strange, bitter, circumscribed war.
01:22:40The Air Force's prime striking weapon,
01:22:43its strategic air command,
01:22:44was ruled out of bounds.
01:22:46The first sustained jet combat in history
01:22:49took place in a quadrangle of sky
01:22:51up to 40,000 feet above the Earth,
01:22:53but always south of the Yalu River.
01:22:56Russia sent aloft a first-rate jet fighter, the MiG.
01:23:00Only the Air Force's saber
01:23:02from the United Nations array of fighter planes
01:23:04could match it.
01:23:04It was a war in which transport airplanes
01:23:08flew 7,000 miles to deliver materiel
01:23:10and to return sick and wounded men.
01:23:14And it was a war in which the helicopter,
01:23:16with its ability to fly standing still
01:23:18and land anywhere,
01:23:20did a multitude of jobs.
01:23:22Among them,
01:23:23transporting literally thousands of wounded
01:23:25from the battlefield to rear area hospitals
01:23:27for prompt surgical attention.
01:23:30Under the impact of Korea,
01:23:31the nation had begun again
01:23:33to turn out modern aircraft in quantities.
01:23:36Mundy Peel,
01:23:37the chairman of the Industries Association.
01:23:39We as an aircraft industry
01:23:41are at the present time
01:23:43turning out about 14,000 airplanes.
01:23:46At the moment,
01:23:47we are a healthy industry.
01:23:48We have to pour back
01:23:50a tremendous amount of funds
01:23:51into research and development,
01:23:53funds that we earn
01:23:54when we make the airplanes.
01:23:55This is a very healthy thing.
01:23:57It creates competition.
01:23:58We want competition.
01:24:00Dutch Kindelberger,
01:24:01whose organization built the Sabre,
01:24:03pictures the sky 10 miles high
01:24:05as man flies at a speed
01:24:07approaching that of sound.
01:24:08Today,
01:24:09we're flying at very great speeds
01:24:11and at very high altitudes.
01:24:13As a matter of fact,
01:24:15up in the area
01:24:17at which a lot of the fighting
01:24:18is being done,
01:24:19around 50,000 feet,
01:24:21we have a different world.
01:24:23It's a thin blue,
01:24:26dark blue air.
01:24:29The sun doesn't shine so brilliantly
01:24:31because there's nothing to reflect it.
01:24:33There's no plan of reference
01:24:35for the pilots,
01:24:35such as hills or clouds or sky.
01:24:38In such an atmosphere as this,
01:24:40even a bomber is hard to see.
01:24:42And the trouble
01:24:44that we are facing
01:24:45in the future
01:24:46is not the sound barrier.
01:24:48We know how to fly through that now.
01:24:50The thing that is bothering everybody
01:24:53is the thermodynamic barrier.
01:24:58The air flowing over an airplane
01:25:02at these very high speeds
01:25:03by friction
01:25:05will heat up the surface
01:25:06of the airplane.
01:25:08As a matter of fact,
01:25:10if we go to Mach number two,
01:25:13which is twice the speed of sound
01:25:14at sea level,
01:25:15the surface of the airplane
01:25:17will get hot very rapidly
01:25:20and will stabilize
01:25:22at about 500 degrees.
01:25:25Since ordinary aluminum alloy
01:25:28loses half its strength
01:25:30by 350 degrees
01:25:31and that even titanium and steels
01:25:35begin to give trouble,
01:25:37at 500 and 600 degrees,
01:25:39it's obvious that we are
01:25:40in a great deal of difficulty
01:25:42in the future.
01:25:44There also are many things
01:25:46like hydraulic fluid.
01:25:48We don't know how to make
01:25:49hydraulic fluid that won't boil away
01:25:51at this temperature.
01:25:52We don't know how to make
01:25:53packings that won't seize
01:25:55at this temperature
01:25:56or bearings or lubricants.
01:25:58In fact,
01:25:59the bubble with which
01:26:00everybody is familiar
01:26:01gets soft and lose its shape
01:26:04and disappear at 300 degrees.
01:26:07So we have ahead of us
01:26:09a great deal of research
01:26:10and a long, long time
01:26:13of trouble
01:26:14before we are going to be going
01:26:16anything like the speeds
01:26:17at which our magazine supplement writers
01:26:21seem to think
01:26:22we are ready for tomorrow.
01:26:25Modern test pilots
01:26:26who fly at sonic speeds
01:26:27and incredible altitudes
01:26:29take an equally factual view
01:26:31of their calling.
01:26:32Tex Johnston sums up his philosophy
01:26:35after putting the J-57 powered
01:26:37B-52 through its paces.
01:26:40After 12 years of testing,
01:26:4410 years in the jet field
01:26:49involving the first jet airplane
01:26:51to fly in this country,
01:26:52the B-59,
01:26:54the first rocket airplane
01:26:55to fly in the United States,
01:26:57the X-1,
01:26:59incidentally the first airplane
01:27:00to fly faster
01:27:01than the speed of sound,
01:27:03the B-47,
01:27:05the B-52,
01:27:07I believe all the more
01:27:09in the two old sayings.
01:27:10First,
01:27:11that one test flight
01:27:13is worth
01:27:14a thousand expert opinions
01:27:16and the other one
01:27:17for the flyboys,
01:27:18the altitude above you
01:27:20and runway behind you
01:27:21will never do you any good.
01:27:23Chuck Yeager,
01:27:24the first man to fly
01:27:25through the sonic barrier,
01:27:27and Bill Bridgman,
01:27:28a test pilot
01:27:29who has flown
01:27:29almost twice the speed of sound
01:27:31and has piloted a plane
01:27:33at an altitude
01:27:33of 79,000 feet,
01:27:36discussed their calling
01:27:37in language
01:27:38peculiarly their own.
01:27:39Certainly enjoyed the work.
01:27:41I think launching
01:27:42is the only safe way
01:27:43to get into that kind of flying.
01:27:45It's a heck of a lot of safe
01:27:46for the takeoffs.
01:27:48Yeah,
01:27:48and you burn so much fuel
01:27:50when you take off
01:27:51before you get up
01:27:51to the altitude
01:27:52where the airplane
01:27:53could drop you.
01:27:53And I actually,
01:27:54I personally think
01:27:55that's the most fun
01:27:56involved in a flight
01:27:57is when the guy
01:27:57cuts you loose,
01:27:58you're just hanging there
01:27:59for a minute,
01:27:59just like on a roller coaster.
01:28:01Yeah.
01:28:01You were pretty close
01:28:02to the stall too
01:28:03when you came out of there,
01:28:04weren't you?
01:28:04Yeah.
01:28:04You dropped out of 29.
01:28:05We stalled at around
01:28:06240 indicated
01:28:07with full fuel load.
01:28:09So one time,
01:28:11I remember Jack Ridley,
01:28:12we had a release failure
01:28:13and he dropped me out
01:28:14at about 180 indicated
01:28:15and I didn't know
01:28:16which end was up
01:28:17for a while.
01:28:18Well,
01:28:19I noticed on the skyrocket
01:28:21that when we first
01:28:22dropped out,
01:28:22you could kind of
01:28:24feel the stall
01:28:24by watching the boom
01:28:25out there.
01:28:26When the boom began
01:28:26to shake
01:28:27while she was on the nipple.
01:28:28I don't know what you...
01:28:29You see it bend?
01:28:29Well, I see it oscillating
01:28:31a little bit.
01:28:32And so the airplane
01:28:33has evolved
01:28:34from the Wrights,
01:28:34whose first flights
01:28:35at Kitty Hawk
01:28:36were at speeds
01:28:37hardly faster
01:28:38than an athlete
01:28:38can run,
01:28:39to speeds today
01:28:40where the Bridgmans,
01:28:41the Yeagers,
01:28:42and the Johnstons
01:28:43travel faster
01:28:44than a bullet.
01:28:47horizons far beyond
01:28:49today's achievements
01:28:50still beckon.
01:29:13your name, sir?
01:29:14Frank DeLong.
01:29:16Have you flown before?
01:29:19Yes, that's what you've flown before.
01:29:20Have you flown before?
01:29:22Yes, that's what you've flown
01:29:28The End
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