Near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright made
the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-
than-air aircraft. Orville piloted the gasoline-powered, propeller-
driven biplane, which stayed aloft for 12 seconds and covered
120 feet on its inaugural flight.
Orville Wright Wilbur Wright
National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC.
The Hughes Flying Boat—at one time the largest aircraft ever built—
was piloted by designer Howard Hughes on its first and only flight.
Built with laminated birch and spruce (hence the nickname the
Spruce Goose) the massive wooden aircraft had a wingspan
longer than a football field and was designed to carry more than
700 men to battle.
Howard Robard Hughes Jr.
(December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976)
Today the Spruce Goose remains in good condition and is on display in McMinnville, Oregon at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum.
U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager became the first person
to fly faster than the speed of sound.
Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat fighter
during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe. He shot
down 13 German planes and was himself shot down over France,
but he escaped capture with the assistance of the French
Underground.
After the war, he was among several volunteers chosen to test-fly
the experimental X-1 rocket plane, built by the Bell Aircraft
Company to explore the possibility of supersonic flight.
On October 14, 1947, Yeager flew the X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California. The craft was lifted to an altitude of 25,000
feet by a B-29 aircraft and then released through the bomb bay,
rocketing to 40,000 feet and exceeding 662 miles per hour
(the sound barrier at that altitude).
Because of the secrecy of the project, Yeager’s achievement was not announced until June 1948. Yeager continued to serve as a test pilot,
and in 1953 he flew 1,650 miles per hour in an X-1A rocket plane.
He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1975 with the rank of brigadier.
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Brigadier General Charles Elwood Yeager
(February 13, 1923 – December 7, 2020)
SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. (WSET) — At 20,000 feet in the sky,
history was made as the first female pilot in the Air National
Guard flew an F-35A Lightning II plane on her inaugural flight.
It took three years of training for 1st Lt. Kelsey Flannery to
reach the achievement, but she had to jump through many
more hoops than just training before she could fly.
The process started when she interviewed in 2019 for the
134th Fighter Squadron, or the "Green Mountain Boys."
Out of hundreds of applicants, Flannery was a member of
the small group selected to continue in the squadron as a
new pilot.
SANDY KOZEL
Charles Augustus Lindbergh
(February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974)
