TWELVE SECONDS THAT CHANGED HISTORY

December 17, 1903 - Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

Three more flights, each successively longer and father, followed as the brothers took turns enjoying the success of three years of experimentation.  On the fourth flight of the day, Wilbur piloted the aircraft for 59 seconds, almost a full minute.  In that final flight the first successful airplane flew for 852 feet, before Wilbur gained the dubious distinction of being the first pilot to make a crash landing.  As the FLYER nosed into the ground, its frail spruce-and-muslin horizontal rudders fell apart.  But the day had been a wonderful success, the Wright Brothers had made history.

Five years later on September 17, 1908 Orville Wright was in the cockpit during a demonstration at Fort Myer, Virginia.   On this day Orville faced disaster, crashing a modified version of their original FLYER.  Orville was injured, US Army Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge who was along as an observer, was killed.  It was a devastating turn of events, causing the Army to delay for six months the delivery of the first military aircraft.

The following summer the Wright brothers fulfilled the first step of their military contract, delivering the first Army airplane on July 30 after 3 days of flight performance tests.  The second portion of their contract called for training two Army officers as pilots.  The first to fly for the US Army were Lieutenants Frank P. Lahm and Frederic E. Humphreys.   Through the fall of 1909, just six years after the birth of powered flight, the first Army aviators were trained under the guidance of the brothers who had developed the first successful airplane.  Within another eight years the US Army would begin to see results, though the full impact of those results would not be accepted for nearly half a century.

The birth of military air power was marked perhaps more by politics than anything else.  It would cost one high ranking pioneer his military career.  It cost many more their lives.  But through it all there arose a new breed of American fighting man, adventurers with dreams in the clouds and nerves of steel.  These were men beyond discouragement, determined to prove their mettle, and dedicated to a new kind of warfare.  They were the knights of the sky, the last of the great explorers, and a brotherhood of proud AIRMEN.