![]() ![]() “Occasionally, they would have airplane crashes into houses,” Rusnak said.īy the early 1920s, the writing was feared to be on the wall for McCook Field and other fledgling aviation functions - and local residents sprang into action. Schools devoted to training closed as the Great War ended.Īnd airplanes were getting bigger, faster and more dangerous. Still, the threat to local operations lingered. So Dayton’s operations switched to training armorers and mechanics early in the First World War. “You don’t really want brand new pilots learning to fly in the ice and snow and bad weather in Dayton,” Rusnak said. Soon enough, there was was talk of moving those Wilbur Wright Field functions to bases in Texas and Alabama. Threats to all of this loomed from the beginning. McCook, a small triangle of land near downtown Dayton, was home to early aeronautical research on engines, propellers, lubricants and much else besides. But the seeds of what became Wright-Patterson were being planted. That logistics function may have slowed in the period between the first and second world wars. Rusnak sees Deeds as someone protective of Dayton’s place as an industrial center.Ī litany of familiar names quickly pops up in the history books: When Wilbur Wright Field began pilot training work in 1917 (near today’s Area A of Wright-Patterson), it helped form what became a trio of aviation-focused sites, with McCook Field in Dayton and the Fairfield Aviation General Supply Depot, a logistics operation near Wilbur Wright Field. Why Dayton? It was connected to the Wright Brothers - and also to another important local figure.Įdward Deeds, a classic early 20th century industrialist, became an Army Reserve officer in charge of supplying the nation’s early air service. “We needed to create all that infrastructure to provide all of this,” he added. “We needed to build and buy a lot of airplanes we needed to crank out thousands of pilots,” Rusnak said. The nation realized it needed to expand its supply of planes in order to fly a war. World War I sparked the furtherance of aviation, inspiring the creation of flying schools across the country. Army’s first contract involved the brothers teaching Army students how to fly the planes the military bought.Īmong those first students was future Air Force five star general Hap Arnold, around 1911 or 1912.ĭayton’s McCook Field became another formative location in the building of what became an Air Force base. There in northwestern Greene County, the brothers established a school for people buying their planes. ![]()
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