National Aviation Month

by Abigail Knowles Wolfe (BPRW)

November is National Aviation Month a time spent celebrating the great discoveries and advancements in flight made here in the United States. While Orville and Wilbur Wright are most often credited with building the world’s first successful airplane they were not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft. The Wright brothers in essence invented the first aircraft controls that allowed mechanical fixed wing flight. Their first sustained heavier-than-air human flight took place on a North Carolina beach in December of 1903.

It is a little known fact that African American pilots have excelled in the field of aviation for more than 80 years. African American Bessie Coleman made history not only as the first American women to receive her pilot’s license but also the first African American ever to do so. She left post-WWI America to receive her training in France, completing a 10 month flight course in only seven months!

Almost exactly 20 years later, the American government began a program to train African Americans as fighter pilots at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The U.S. Army Air Force did not realize the extent to which these pilots would excel. The now famous Tuskegee Airmen went on to outperform their white counterparts throughout WWII, known to the German air force as “schwartze vogelmenshen,” the feared black birdmen with a near perfect record, almost never losing bombers to enemy fighters. Crews of American bomber pilots are said to have called them “Red-tailed angels,” because of their bright red painted tail and wing assemblies.

2007 saw 23 year-old Barrington Irving make aviation history with an international flight, circling the globe in a single-engine airplane. The Jamaican-decent college student became the youngest person ever to achieve this feat, not to mention opening doors for men and women of all ages and ethnicities within the often elite field of aviation.

Great aviators like Bessie Coleman, The Tuskegee Airmen and Barrington Irving will go down in history as pioneers ahead of their time. As we consider National Aviation Month this year let us not forget about the diverse and unique individuals who paved the way in aviation for everyone to follow and the powerful history that was made.