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Never Too Young to Study Aviation History

When I was 13 years old, I enrolled in the Civil Air Patrol program and began my study of aviation history. Most people think that aviation history begins with the Wright Brothers’ historic flight at Kitty Hawk, NC. My studies of aviation history took me all the way back to the 1700s and the Montgolfier’s first hot air balloon flight. Much is made of the fact that the first passengers were animals and not man. However, when Orville Wright made his first historic powered flight on December 17, 1903, which lasted 12 seconds and travelled all of 120 feet, there were no animals on board. The famous Wright Flyer would make three trips into aviation history that day flying further and further each time. Towards the end of the day, a gust of wind caught the Flyer and destroyed it as it sat on the ground. For many of us, it was that day when aviation history began for real.

The records came one after the other for a long time. Solo flights across the English Channel, solo flights across the Atlantic, solo flights around the world. Every day, aviation history was being rewritten. Once General Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound, speed records were made and broken routinely. With the advent of jet technology, the world of aviation history would never be the same.

I was seven years old when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. I remember watching it live on tv with all the neighbors talking about it and later that night trying to get my low powered telescope to focus on the moon so that I could see the lunar lander. The space program is very much a part of our aviation history. We’ve seen the space shuttle have its own success and disasters, and we can soon look forward to the next chapter of aviation history when the space program enters its next phase. One day, we could have a space station in orbit around the Earth with reuseable spacecraft shuttleing normal humans from Earth to Space, just because we can.

One of my favorite episodes of aviation history was the Concorde Jet that British Airways and Air France flew. This was a futuristic design that did tasks that sounded impossible as they were being performed. It was sad when the Concorde crashed, and even sadder when they were permanently retired from service and took their place in aviation history. The Concorde was about as far away from an ultralight airplane that you could get.

I’ll never forget the time when I got to meet a couple of living legends in aviation history. When I attended the EAA Air Adventure in Oshkosh, WI back in 1988, I was shocked to find Gregory “Pappy” Boyington sitting at a table signing autographs and having his picture taken. Pappy Boyington was in charge of the famous Marine F-4U Corsair Fighter Group in the South Pacific during World War II. His antics were so legendary, they made a television show about his time in the war called Baa Baa Black Sheep. I bought Pappy’s book, had him sign it, got a picture taken with him and two years later he passed away.

There was this other time at an airshow that I got to meet Robert “Bob” Hoover. Mr. Hoover was the backup pilot to Chuck Yeager on the speed of sound flight and was an incredible test pilot all on his own. He had a very colorful career and ended up flying for Rockwell at airshows demonstrating his skills with a P-51 Mustang and doing his famous air show with the Rockwell Aero Commander, an airplane that I was proud and thrilled to eventually fly when I was a freight pilot flying the United States Mail. Make it a point to attend some of these events and meet these living legends of aviation history before it’s too late.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Airplanes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Never Too Young to Study Aviation History

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