From the Wright Brothers to Charles Lindbergh to Chuck Yeager to Neil Armstrong, Americans were the leaders in aviation.
The early kite-like pusher biplanes of the Wrights and Glenn Curtiss astounded the world, especially when Curtiss won the Rheims international air race in 1909. The Wrights let their pre-eminence slip away and by 1915, the Curtiss Aeroplane Company was the largest in the world. During World War One, under wartime pressure, the British, French, and Germans made more rapid advances than the Americans.
But the Twenties were another story, and U.S. military fliers set the pace in high-speed flying, and of course, in 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew solo from New York to Paris, an event quite unrivalled in modern history. In the late Twenties and through the Thirties, air racing became quite the rage in the United States, and odd-looking “all-engine” airplanes like the infamous GeeBee set new records. Other American aviators like Wiley Post and Amelia Earhart established new frontiers in aviation.
Aircraft technology proceeded apace: Pratt & Whitney’s double Wasp radial engines were the powerhouses of the day. RCA produced the finest electronic equipment.
In World War Two, the American air forces relied on massive numbers of high-quality airplanes – fighters, bombers, trainers, as well as pilots, air crews, supplies, and spare parts – to rule the skies.
The Wright-Martin Type V, was a reconnaissance type with tractor propeller, and the observer’s cockpit being placed well forward of the entering wedge of the lower wings.
Specifications from “Practical Aviation,†by Charles Hayward, 1919
Planes
The span of the machine is 39 feet 8 ½ inches, both planes being the same size. The [...]
The Standard J-R was a development of the preliminary training tractor machine built by the same makers. It was equipped with a 175-h.p. six-cylinder Hall-Scott motor, is capable of climbing 5000 feet in 10 minutes, and had a maximum flying speed of 95 m.p.h. and a landing speed of 48 m.p.h.
Specifications from “Practical Aviation,†by [...]
The most famous and widely used American airplane of the World War One era. In the 1920’s countless ‘barnstormers’ flew Jennies in flight exhibitions all over the United States. The Curtiss tractor was identified by its manufacturers as Model JNB-4 and was been largely used for training purposes during the war.
Specifications from “Practical Aviation,†[...]
The Continental pusher biplane is one of the comparatively few machines of the pusher type turned out in this country. A pusher aeroplane is one in which the propeller is back of the planes and thrusts the machine forward instead of pulling it as in the tractor type. It will be recalled that [...]
Under the American system of training aviators, the pupil goes into the air directly on completing his course of ground instruction, that is, in the details of the mechanism, theory, and assembly of the aeroplane, instead of as in the French system, being obliged to get his preliminary “flying in a penguin, or practically wingless [...]
Up to the time that the United States entered the war, American aeroplane procurements were confined to machines intended for training purposes. This Aeromarine biplane was fairly typical of U.S. trainers at the time.
Specifications from “Practical Aviation,†by Charles Hayward, 1919
Performance. The Aeromarine trainer has a top speed of 90 m.p.h., and lands [...]
Probably the most interesting aeroplane that came out during 1910 was the small Wright “roadster,” with its miniature biplane cell, and its huge propellers spanning almost the entire machine. This speed and reliability product of the Dayton inventors has excited a lot of interest, and suggested many of the improvements that the [...]
In 1903, after exhaustive experiments in gliding, Wilbur and Orville Wright finally flew a motor-driven airplane. Over the next five years they built other airplanes, which differed little from the one that first took wing at Kitty Hawk. Their first public flights, in September, 1908 (Orville Wright at Fort Meyer, and Wilbur Wright at Le [...]
Resting on its undercarriage of 4 equally-spaced wheels, the Pfitzner monoplane might be compared to a flying grocery cart, with very long, rectangular wings.
In the early part of January, 1910, the monoplane designed by Mr. A. L. Pfitzner and built at the Curtiss aeroplane factory at Hammondsport, N. Y., was completed and flown. [...]
Introduced in 1910, the Model B was the Wright Brothers’ first airplane built in production quantities.
While a direct development of their Flyers, it was their first airplane to include wheels and to locate the elevator planes in the rear, behind a twin rudder. It retained skid struts and wing-warping (the Wrights’ preferred method of roll-control). [...]
