The Wright Brothers, 1909 military flyer.
This is the beginning of true air power as we know it today because it's the Air Force's
first airplane.
Flying in 1909 was pretty dangerous.
Every flight was different.
You were always learning something.
Someone had to do a landing.
You had to learn how to land.
You had to learn how to take off.
You had to learn how to turn.
Always a new experience.
But then you also had to learn what happens if a bug hits you in the eye.
They have to learn the hard way.
You better wear goggles when you're flying.
They have to learn what the airplane can do.
This is the beginning of so many things.
They're looking at reconnaissance and carrying information.
That's why this aircraft is called Signal Corps 1.
This Signal Corps, the U.S. Army, which eventually becomes the U.S. Air Force, needed this aircraft
to carry messages, to do reconnaissance, to look for enemy troops.
This is 1909.
Only six years earlier, the Wright Brothers had just flown their first aircraft at Kitty
Hawk.
The Wright Brothers took their aircraft to Fort Myers, Virginia, and they demonstrated
that it could do everything that the Army wanted in their specifications.
People had tried to sell airplanes to the Army before and they hadn't worked.
The Wright Brothers airplane worked.
This aircraft was taken to Texas with Lieutenant Benny Filoi, who later took command of the
U.S. Army Air Corps in the 1930s.
He went down there, but he really didn't know how to fly.
He had flown, but he didn't know how to fly.
So how did the Wright Brothers teach him to fly?
Through correspondence.
He'd fly a little bit, he'd send a letter back.
He'd send a letter back, he'd fly a little bit more.
And so the fledgling American aviators that become the U.S. Air Force are learning the
hard lessons of flight and of air power.
The Wright Brothers and Benny Filoi were a product of America from the late 19th century.
These were men who were always looking for adventure, looking for the future.
They had been brought up and steeped in the idea that America is the future and the sky
is the limit.
And with this airplane, literally the sky became the limit.
People in the Army started to understand we don't have to give somebody a message on
horseback and send them at 10 miles an hour through the woods.
Now we can fly that message at 40 miles, four times faster.
You can also fly over and when you look down, oh, I can see troops moving around.
I can go across boundaries.
I can grow across water.
I can go over the hill and see what's on the other side of the hill.
And very quickly after that, somebody started thinking, if I carry a machine gun, I can
do some damage.
And somebody starts thinking, if I can carry a bomb, I can really do some damage to the
enemy.
And this is the beginning of what air power is.
It's reconnaissance, it's transportation, it's providing weaponry on targets.
And within just a few years after this, the First World War demonstrates the importance
of having air superiority.
A pilot today, flying all safe for example, the F-35, it doesn't look a whole lot like
this airplane.
In some respects, but the same principles apply for the F-35 has applied to the 1909
military flyer.
They both use lift, they both use thrust, they have both had to have some type of control
system.
Now they don't have wheels on it, they have a landing system, wheels are added later.
That's not a problem, that's growth in aviation.
So this airplane, this replica of the 1909 military flyer, it represents over a century
of air power domination by the United States Air Force, it's the beginning, small beginning,
very important.
