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  • Lt. Gen. Frank M. Andrews

    Before his premature death in 1943, Frank Maxwell Andrews played a major role in building the small U.S. Army Air Corps of the 1930s into the powerful U.S. Army Air Forces of World War II. Furthermore, he had become one of the key military commanders in the United States' armed forces. Born in

  • Test Propellers

    (as shown from left to right in photograph)Hinged-Blade Research PropellerThis 10-foot experimental propeller was ground-tested at McCook Field for the U.S. Navy. Built by Paragon Engineers Inc., it was designed with hinged blades to permit it to adapt to changes in air pressure.Micarta Controllable

  • Air Mail Ramp Light

    This 10,000-volt floodlight was manufactured by the BBT Corp. of America of Philadelphia. It was used in the 1930s at a government air mail emergency airfield near Waterman, Ill., where the donor's father was a weather observer and caretaker.Click here to return to the Early Years Gallery.

  • Airplane Landing Lights

    Early in the 1920s, McCook Field began experimenting with night flying equipment. Emphasis was placed upon airplane landing lights to replace highly dangerous wingtip and parachute flares in use at the time. The two lights on display at the museum, designed and tested at McCook Field in 1925, were

  • Early Free-Fall Parachute

    The first successful Army test jump with a free-fall parachute was made by Mr. Leslie Irvin at McCook Field on April 28, 1919, using a chute designed by Floyd Smith and Guy Ball, both civilian employees at McCook.The parachute on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, one of

  • Research & Development at McCook Field

    When the United States entered World War I, an urgent need developed for an active research and development program for military aviation. A site was selected at Dayton, Ohio, because of its location relative to America's industrial complex, and on Oct. 18, 1917, McCook Field was established. For

  • Advent of the All-Metal Airplane

    By the early 1930s, aircraft design and construction technology throughout the world had advanced to the point where it was possible to mass-produce all-metal airplanes. There had been an all-metal plane as early as World War I, but it was an exception. Most airplanes of the war period and the 1920s

  • B-10 Alaskan Flight

    In 1934 the Air Corps established a project for a mass flight to Alaska of its new type all-metal monoplane bomber, the Martin B-10. Such a flight would not only prove the feasibility of sending an aerial force to Alaska in an emergency, but it would be excellent training for personnel flying across

  • Balloons & Airships

    Following World War I, the Air Service expanded its lighter-than-air activities. It continued the use of captive observation balloons for several years and began using free balloons and even non-rigid and semi-rigid airships. It participated in numerous balloon races and flew its airships in various

  • Fatal Flight of Capt. Gray

    Capt. Hawthorne C. Gray, one of the Air Corps' leading balloonists following World War I, was selected to make experimental high-altitude research flights in 1927. During his first flight on March 9, he lost consciousness at 27,000 feet because his oxygen equipment froze; he survived because his