The earliest memory I have of the Smithsonian Institution is an ugly one. I went as a youth with my family to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. We had experienced (or I had experienced) a difficult, airsick flight to get from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., and the first thing I saw at the museum was The Spirit of St. Louis, hanging above us in all its glory, the airplane that Charles Lindbergh piloted on the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic.
I went pale and sweaty, stomach like a roller coaster, and threw up. Right there in the Smithsonian Institution! At least it wasn’t on the floor. I made the deposit in a nearby sand-filled ash tray. I don’t recall much else, other than my mother, after a bit of fuss – I thought you had gotten that out of your system on the plane! — helped clean me up, and I was good to go the rest of the way.
This is to lead into some reflections after a visit with some friends last week to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.
We’ve heard so many heroes or pioneers through our lives give credit to others who came before them, “those upon whose shoulders we stand,” and there is truth to that through history.
We’ve all read or been taught (or we should have been taught), for instance, about Lindbergh’s historic flight across the Atlantic. Or maybe we’ve seen the movie with Jimmy Stewart playing the lead role. Well, that historic flight happened in 1927. But the first transatlantic flight happened eight years earlier, except it was not a non-stop flight.
Lindbergh, therefore, stood on the shoulders of Naval aviator Albert Cushing “Putty” Read, a native of Lyme, New Hampshire, who piloted NC-4, the first airplane to fly across the Atlantic in 1919. That year, the Navy sought to demonstrate that floatplanes were capable of transatlantic flight, and so it built four NC (the NC stood for Navy-Curtiss, showing the joint design and building effort between the U.S. Navy and the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company during World War I.) The number 4 designated that airplane as the fourth of its kind.
NC-1, NC-2 and NC-3 didn’t make it, for various reasons. The flight path – since it wasn’t non-stop – went from Rockaway, New York to Lisbon, Portugal via stops at Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and the Azores. The flight needed stops for refueling, repairs and crewmen’s meals and rest, so along the route there were 53 Navy ships positioned about every 50 miles to help with the navigation and rescue crewmen in case of emergency. Although NC-4 had mechanical difficulties in the Azores, it reached Lisbon on May 27, becoming the first to fly across the Atlantic. It went on to Plymouth, England on May 31 to become the first aircraft to fly from the United States to Great Britain.
The complete trip took 23 days to cover 3,936 nautical miles. This was an aircraft with a maximum speed of 85 mph, and the highest it could fly was 2,500 feet. Read commanded a crew of five men on that mission.
OK, fast forward to World War II and we all have heard or learned (or should have been taught) about Medal of Honor winner General James Doolittle and the Doolittle Raiders. As a lieutenant colonel in 1942, he led his “Raiders” in the first aerial raid on the Japanese homeland – 16 B-25 medium bombers from the aircraft carrier Hornet. With targets in Tokyo and three other Japanese cities, the daring one-way mission on April 18, 1942, gave America’s war hopes a huge lift.
But that couldn’t have happened had it not been for Rear Adm. Henry L. Miller, who taught Doolittle’s Raiders how to take off from an aircraft carrier. He was a lieutenant at the time and flight instructor at Eglin Field, Florida, and he taught pilots of B-25 bombers how to take off their heavily laden bombers with a run of only 450 feet compared to the normal runway takeoff of 1,200 to 1,500 feet. Miller had hoped to fly on the mission but the five-man crews for the 16 Army planes were full.
And if you think drones are the latest thing, think again. Research began in 1936 relating to naval use for pilotless drones. The TDR-1, the first drone, was ready by late 1942 and finally saw action in September 1944 in the Southwest Pacific. Some 50 drones were launched with 31 hits recorded on anti-aircraft sites, bridges, airfields and grounded ships. It was guided by a modified torpedo bomber. The pilot would pass control to the controller in the rear cockpit, who would then guide the drone to the target, helped by a 5-inch TV screen receiving visual signals from the TDR’s nose-mounted camera. The armament on this 37-foot, 11-inch drone — with a wingspan almost 49 feet — was one 1,000-pound bomb or torpedo.
One thing leads to another. One blazes a trail for another. An old expression came to life after a visit to the National Naval Aviation Museum. Think of this, too. Just 50 years after that first roundabout transatlantic flight in 1919, Apollo 11 became the first flight to land on the moon on July 20, 1969. “One giant leap for mankind” had its roots in that rickety flight from the Azores to Lisbon.