United States Army Aircraft Production Facts

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Excerpt from United States Army Aircraft Production Facts: Compiled at the Request of the Assistant Secretary of War, January, 1919 The Wright brothers, on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, N. C., made man's first successful sustained and directed flight in a heavier-than-air machine, driven by a gas engine. Wilbur Wright flew 852 feet in 59 seconds, and his four-cylinder gas engine generated 12 horsepower. Thus started the development of the enormous air activity to be later used in warfare. To fully understand the position of the United States in aeronautics at the time of our declaration of war, one must realize how very little of the development had been carried on in this country, how relatively lacking we were in knowledge of aeronautics, and how completely and absolutely we lacked knowledge of the equipment of military airplanes. The Army had done some flying at San Diego, using the flying field on North Island, which had been made available by the generosity of the Coronado Beach Co., who loaned the land to the Government, as no funds were available at that time for leasing property for flying fields. The Air Service had had a struggling and meager existence, working with the old pusher type of planes, until, in 1914, an appropriation of$250, 000 was made available for the purchase of airplanes and their equipment. About this time five officers were sent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a special course in aeronautics. These men constituted the entire technically trained personnel of the Air Service of the United States Army when war was declared in Europe in August, 1914. The total personnel, both military and civilian, numbered 194 men, with a minimum of equipment. At the time of signing the armistice the records showed a total of 195, 024 men, to whom had been delivered during the war 16, 952 airplanes. The creation of this personnel, and their equipment, in all its infinite detail, was one of the great problems of the war. This pamphlet presents the story of the production of aircraft in nontechnical language as an aid to a better understanding of the past and future industrial problems of the Air Service. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.