Aviation expert: Ohio's role in history of flight is 'extraordinary'

The Armstrong Air and Space Museum held its first Facebook Live event of the year Tuesday night, feature Dr. Tom Crouch, a curator emeritus at the Smithsonian and a leading researching and historian in the fields of aviation and aeronautics. The event was co-hosted by First on the Moon, the Armstrong Airport and the Auglaize County Historical Society.

A native Ohioan, Crouch started the presentation by acknowledging the role Ohio played in the history of aerospace and aviation.

"It really is extraordinary," Crouch said. "I can't think of another state where so many great events have happened in the air."

Crouch started the presentation like any historian would, at the beginning and the Hopewell national monument. According to Crouch, Hopewell and the Newark Earthworks artwork were aligned astronomically and made use of the 18-year lunar cycle.

"Ohioans from the very beginning have been fascinated by the sky and paid attention to it," Crouch said.

According to Crouch, in 1834 A.E. Mason built a steam engine that would later go on to drive helicopter-type blades. Although the contraption never managed to fly, it was a significant step in aviation.

"This really is the first time, not just in the history of Ohio and in the nation, but the history of the world, when anyone really did go ahead and completely build a powered flying machine powered by a prime motor, a steam engine, and actually try to fly the thing," Crouch noted.

Incidentally, around the same time Thomas Kirkby became the first person flew a balloon in the state of Ohio in Dec. 15, 1834.

One of the first important flights made in Ohio before the civil war was made by balloonist TSC Lowe in 1861. Lowe's goal was to fly to the Atlantic, and after starting his flight in Cincinati he coming close

to the Atlantic, fate had other plans and wind gusts carried him to Unionville, SC, where he was arrested by confederate soldiers.

Following the turn of the 20th century, people like Roy Kanbenshue from Toledo had started flying one-person pedal- or gasoline powered airships.

But it was the Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, of Dayton who began thinking of aeronautics in 189698 that changed the game with their fascination in machining and metal working.

The brothers, fascinated by flight since childhood, began their design of the plane in 1899.

"Up until that time people had done experiments with wings," Crouch explained. "They had done experiments with potential power plants for aeronautical craft, but nobody had given much thought to the notion of how you were going to control this thing once you got it into the air," Crouch said. The Wrights, however, began their designs with the goal of trying to control machine by experimenting with kites and eventually gliders. Their experiments led them to the conclusion that airplanes should be designed using blueprints from gliders.

Finally, in 1901, they managed to to produce a glider that would take them into the air. During these flights they discovered they had flight control problems and were relatively afraid of flying, and on December 17,1903 at 10:35 a.m. the brothers made their first successful powered, sustained flight.

The brothers also decided that rather than spend money and travel to North Carolina, they decided to continue their research back in Ohio in area east of Dayton. And from 1904-05, the Wright's began developing practical flying machines, a fact that Crouch was proud of.

"If the world's first heavier-than-air powered sustained flight took place in Kitty Hawk, the first flights of practical airplanes took place in… Dayton, Ohio in 1904-05."

And the Wright brothers weren't the only famous pioneers in Ohio. Walter Wellman of Mentor, Ohio managed to take an airship to the Arctic ocean and became the first person to attempt a flight to the North Pole in a powered airship, though he was unsuccessful.

Ed and Milton Korn of Shelby County have an airplane on display at the National Air and Space Museum. Cromwell Dixon from Columbus managed to fly a one-person gasoline-powered airship around and later died in airplane crash after successfully flying offer the Rocky Mountains. Ernie Hall became the first head of the Department of Aviation of Ohio, and Eddie Rickenbacker achieved 26 victories while flying during WWI.

Mccook Field in Dayton became the center of the Army Air Service Engineering division and established itself as the place where research and technology was pushed to its limit.

"Just an extraordinary place," Crouch admitted.

It was at Mccook that the Daytonwright Kettering Bug 1was developed. The Kettering Bug served as the first American drone.

"If WWI had gone on to1919, they probably would have tried flying Dayton-wright bugs against Germany," Crouch speculated.

And after the war and in to the 1920s, Mccook Field became a research center of aeronautical research, and some of the mostfamous famous test pilots came from Mccook.

But noticing the area was too small, the Patterson family founded the Dayton Air Service Committee, raised money and bought land northeast of Dayton in order to establish Wright Field, which opened in 1927.

"People don't appreciate the role Wright Field played in the American aerial victory in WWII," Croud said. "… If you think about the airplanes fights, bombers, transport aircraft that American Army aviators flew to victory during WWII, virtually every one of them was conceived, contracted for, designed, [and] tested at Wright Field."

In Cleveland in the 1930s there were the National Air Races, and there are all the astronauts who have come from the state, including John Glenn Jr., Neil Armstrong, James Lovell and Judith Resnik.

And don't forget the Armstrong Museum, which, according to Crouch, was dedicated "to the history of flight in Ohio."