The Legacy of Flight
Images from the archives of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
- By David Romanowski and Melissa Keiser
- AirSpaceMag.com, September 14, 2010
Watch a ghostly airship float by the Eiffel Tower on a foggy morning in 1903. Stand on the dusty grounds of Fort Myer, Virginia in 1908, as Orville Wright makes a test flight for the U.S. Army. Meet the unheralded heroes—the mechanics and ground crews—of the U.S. Air Mail Service as they prepare a flight in 1919.
These evocative photographs are just three of the more than two million images in the archives of the National Air and Space Museum. Can’t visit Washington and peruse the files yourself? Never fear. Melissa Keiser, the Museum’s chief photo archivist, has selected 132 photographs from the collection that span the breadth of aerospace history. Her choices have been published in a new book, The Legacy of Flight: Images from the Archives of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (by David Romanowski and Melissa Keiser, Bunker Hill Publishing, 2010); click on the thumbnails at right to see a selection.
Pictured above: "Newspaper and magazine photographs of Otto Lilienthal gliding down hillsides near Berlin in the 1890s stirred excitement around the world," write Romanowski and Keiser. "Lilienthal made nearly 2,000 flights, some extending almost 1,000 feet and lasting 12 to 15 seconds. His success stemmed from more than 20 years of careful research. Lilienthal built and flew many different gliders, including this biplane design. His single-wing gliders, which looked and operated much like modern hang gliders, performed best. But control remained precarious, as a strong gust of wind on August 9, 1896, tragically proved. Lilienthal’s glider nosed up, stalled, and plummeted 50 feet to the ground. The fall broke his spine, and he died the next day."
All captions and images reprinted by permission.
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Comments (4)
Can some knowledgeable person comment upon why the
canopy of the distant (of the four) F-51 seems
different from the others. EDITORS' REPLY: According to Melissa Keiser and David Romanowski’s book, “The top three airplanes are P-51Ds, the first model with the distinctive bubble canopy, which improved the pilot’s view toward the rear. Suzy-C, by contrast, is a P51B with the earlier canopy design.”
Posted by J. P. Vetrano on October 30,2010 | 05:58 PM
The caption of photo 9 is not phrased well.
The thousands of men who serviced and flew the B-24 Liberator also deserve some acknowledgment as the "might" of the Mighty Eigth Air Force's daylight campaign.
Posted by Mark Breeding on February 10,2012 | 11:32 AM
Note the second P-51 aircraft has a revised tail.
Posted by James Williamson on April 18,2013 | 10:03 AM
Let me just make an inocuous comment; as an ex-86D driver, your stuff is the first I note each AM.
Posted by Gordon Caswell on April 18,2013 | 04:56 PM