Flight Training and American Aviation Pioneers
The pioneering spirit in aviation
is fundamentally different from the one found in most other forms of
endeavor. There is something about the very term "aviation" that
adds dash and danger and romance to the pioneering concept. We do not
confuse, for example, the aviation with the software pioneer. When
computer whiz Bill Gates crashed at Harvard University in 1974, he went
for a brew; when aviatrix Harriet Quimby crashed at Boston in 1912, she
went to the morgue.
Indeed, the dangers inherent in early flight
produce a key ingredient in how we define aviation pioneers, at least
those we identify before 1912: they generally taught themselves how to
fly. From this fact emerges the obvious. Many pioneers endured accidents
and experienced bodily harm.
Amply recorded by contemporaries and later
historians was the prize-winning, fame-producing, pioneering flight by
French aviator Louis Bleriot. He flew across the English Channel in July
1909. Fewer remember that just five months later he suffered his
thirty-second airplane crash, this one near Constantinople (now,
Istanbul). The accident was so serious and injured Bleriot so severely
that it all but ended his flying career.
Russian pioneer Igor Sikorsky also experienced
numerous accidents when he taught himself how to fly. Maddeningly, from
Sikorsky’s perspective, most of his "unexpected" landings were
due to engine failure. After he enjoyed public and governmental acclaim
for his Model 6 and acquired the financial backing of a large company,
Sikorsky built The Grand in 1913. He designed the four-engined behemoth so
its pesky powerplants could be serviced in flight.
The prize for dogged
determination in learning flight must go to the American, Clyde Cessna.
After he purchased a U.S. copy of Bleriot’s Model XI early in 1911, he
packed his family and moved to Oklahoma's Great Salt Plains where he
taught himself how to fly. Cessna succeeded, but only after six months of
innumerable teeth-rattling crashes that made him a world class expert on
repairing airplanes.
Like many pioneers, Cessna, Sikorsky, and Bleriot
initially attracted attention precisely because they had taught themselves
how to fly and had become expert pilots. Indeed, all three gained
publicity by their exhibition or distance flights. Their fame, however,
was sustained and broadened by the fact that they also designed, built,
and sold airplanes to the public and/or military.
As entrepreneurs and salesmen, they had every
reason to convert the act of flying from a death-defying stunt to a
reasonably safe activity that would appeal to their future customers. Thus
many pioneers, especially those who built and sold aircraft, involved
themselves in flight training. And this characteristic was equally true of
America's . . . .
|