Reconsidering a Century of Flight (review)

Anniversary celebrations compel people to reflect, not just on the event, but also on what has transpired since that event. This reflection carries the average person into the world of the historian, who employs the study of "cause and effect" and "comparison and contrast" over periods of time to understand the past. Some anniversaries, like the centennial of the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, draw global attention, and historians play important roles in teaching the public about the history of the event. More importantly, historians teach the event's broader significance, which will be remembered long after the celebrations themselves.

Launius and Bednarek chose most of the twelve essays for Reconsidering a Century of Flight from papers presented at a symposium on the Wright brothers at North Carolina State University in 2001. Aimed at an academic audience, these essays reflect less on the event of the first flight than on four themes considered "central to the evolution" of flight during the first 100 years: innovation and technology, civil aeronautics and government policy, aerial warfare, and aviation in the American imagination. In the first section, Roger Bilstein and Hans-Joachim Braun address aeronautical innovation to demonstrate the close ties between American and European technological advances. Launius argues for a doubling of American investment into aeronautical research and development. In the second section, essays by David Lee and David Lewis consider the impact of political viewpoints and volatile personalities on the shaping of governmental regulation of civil aviation before World War II. By contrast, William Leary provides an example of government and industry working in harmony to overcome the menace of in-flight icing to aviation.

Turning to military aviation, Timothy Warnock highlights the paradox of increasingly warm personal relationships between the Wright brothers and Army fliers even as the Army turned cool toward purchasing Wright-built airplanes. Conversely, John Morrow describes how European nations embraced the Wrights' invention for military purposes, which fueled the public's faith in air power. Ironically, this faith evolved into an enchantment with the "knights of the air" and a belief in the value of the strategic bombing of civilians. Tami Davis Biddle's analysis of strategic air warfare demonstrates that, while weapons evolved, the core faith in the usefulness of those weapons remained unchanged through the twentieth century.

In the final section, David Courtwright examines how marketing campaigns fostered the success of post-World War II commercial aviation, and Anne Collins Goodyear presents an intriguing look at the effect of aviation on the art world. Lastly, Dominick Pisano cautions against letting the celebration of a single event overshadow events of equal or greater importance. He argues that the public's focusing on Lindbergh's celebrated flight across the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis has diminished the importance of Lindbergh's publicity flights around the United States and good will flights to Latin America in the Spirit. Clearly, Launius and Bednarek would apply this cautionary warning to the Wright brother's first flight, and this collection of essays will help the public understand the methods used by historians.