Wings for the Fleet
Описание книги
The men who ventured into the air in the Navy’s first frail aircraft were not only daring—they had vision, persistence, and a nearly unlimited determination to convince the skeptics that their frail kite-like structures could someday possess military value. This is the story of their trials, tragedies, and triumphs. They patched cooling systems with chewing gum, they lived by “crash, repair, and fly again,” but they succeeded in developing this new service into an effective arm of the fleet.Wings for the Fleet, first published in 1966, covers the fascinating details of those pioneering days from 1910 to the entry of the United States into World War I. All of the heroic “early birds” are here with full accounts of their exploits. Admiral van Deurs, himself a naval aviator since the early 1920s, has rendered a significant service by his careful preparation of this well-balanced, thoroughly illustrated historical account, which comes complete with appendixes listing early naval aviators and the planes they flew. Over one hundred photographs were selected from official and private sources to illustrate this book.
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More than half a century ago, as officer of the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay, I watched a daring young man make the world’s first aeroplane landing aboard ship. Aviation was in its infancy then; less than ten years had passed since the Wright brothers had made the world’s first powered flight. Few who watched Ely’s sensational feat realized its historical significance, for that day marked the actual beginning of naval aviation.
The men who ventured into the air in the Navy’s first frail aircraft, and the trial and error methods by which they developed naval aviation into the mighty weapon it was to become in World War II, are nearly forgotten now in a swift passing of history. They were not only daring—they had vision, persistence, and nearly unlimited determination, qualities which were required if they were to convince the skeptics that their playthings of the wind could ever possess military value.
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That summer, from a leased field near Dayton, they flew and practiced turns in the air. Only a few farmer friends watched them. Big prizes were attracting many unsuccessful flying machine inventors to the St. Louis Exposition. But Orville and Wilbur stayed away. They considered their machine too simple and too valuable to show publicly before they were protected by patents.
9. A 1907 Wright aeroplane in flight at Pilot Training School, Montgomery, Alabama, 1910. (Wide World Photo)
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