INTRODUCTION THE Manufacturers Aircraft Association presents the Aircraft Year Book for 1920, the second of the series. In compiling this volume, the Association has enjoyed the cordial cooperation of the Army, Navy, and the Post Office air service. Appreciation is due especially to Lieut. Col. H. M. Hickam, Chief of the Information Group of the Army Air Service, Major Ernest L. Jones, also of the Information Group; to Lieut. Commander R. E. Byrd, and Lieut. L. B. Averill, of Naval Aviation; and to Otto Praeger, Second Assistant Postmaster General. The Manufacturers Aircraft Association believes that the American public realizes the fact that we, the pioneers in aviation, must, and will lead the world. Prior to our entrance into the war, the art was neglected; the few months of the conflict were taken up with an industrial effort, without parallel in the history of the United States, and unequaled, we believe, in the results visible when the Armistice was signed, November 11th, 1918. On that date began a new period for aeronautics, and this volume records what has been accomplished to the close of 1919. MANUFACTURERS AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION INC. New York, January 1st, 1920. S CHAPTER I AIRCRAFT IN COMMERCE INCE the signing of the Armistice, November 11th, 1918, when the science of aeronautics was released from war, and permitted to demonstrate its possibilities in peace, the earth has been two-thirds flown around. The Atlantic Ocean has been safely crossed four times, twice in heavier-than-air machines, and twice in lighter-than-air craft, and to America the discoverer of the airplane has gone the matchless honor of first achieving this feat. Many thousands of persons men, women and children have been carried as passengers, for there is hardly a country one can think of, not even excepting China and the new Arabian kingdom of Hedjas, in which civil aerial transport has not been attempted to some degree. As certain years, such as those which produced the first practical proof of some new progress by man, have passed into history as the opening of a new era, so the year 1919 will be recorded as the beginning of the Flying Age. What was prophecy a year ago is fulfilled to-day. "The Afternoon Mail" is a daily occurrence. The routes from Washington to New York and New York to Chicago are in regular operation, and ships are under construction to carry letters and parcel post to Omaha and San Francisco. Small sporting machines would be needed, it was said—and we have them now, land and water types, to meet the increasing demand. Comfortable aerial liners would be evolved, we hoped, and by last summer we built them and flew them, five and eight and twelve passenger airplanes and sea planes. The "freighter" would be next, it was predicted, and freighters, as this book goes to press, are taking the air - huge ships that carry from fifteen hundred to six thousand pounds, in addition to equipment, fuel and crew. Airplanes, keeping swift vigil over our forests, were visualized, and in 1919 they were actually the means of saving millions of dollars worth of property and doubtless many lives, from destruction, by reporting timber fires before the flames got beyond control. The long coast line of the United States, with its menace to shipping, could well be protected by aircraft, was the declaration, and late in 1919 the first airplane left Hazelhurst Field, Mineola, Long Island, for the first patrol down the Atlantic shore. The miner in remote regions, the oil operator plagued by bandits, the rancher perplexed by the failure of motor or horse transport,— these, we said a year ago, would have legitimate uses for aircraft. To-day, planes are carrying oil field payrolls, enabling executives to cover tremendous distances daily, and capitalists have called airplane manufacturers to their assistance in taking machinery to a rich but hitherto inaccessible gold mine, then removing the ore to tidewater. Most stimulating of all were the forecasts-visions, some said of a trans-Atlantic flight. My first impression," said Lieut. Commander A. C. Read, of the N.C.-4, " on reaching Lisbon, was that the Atlantic Ocean had shrunk tremendously in size." And so indeed it had, as had also the world and man's conception of them. Kipling, many years ago, in his classic "The Night Mail," described the flight between suns from England to Canada, and shortly after Read flew the Atlantic, Capt. John Alcock took off from Newfoundland at dusk and early the next morning came down in Ireland. Fiction had become fact. Since then, flight has followed upon flight in the United States, a pleasure "hop" at the village airdrome, a "taxi" to Atlantic City or Catalina, races to Canada and across the continent, a jaunt around the rim of the United States, a business cruise to Cuba, and now, as the year closes, a flight from England to Australia. Thus, in twelve months time, we have seen an art, born but a short. time before the World War and confined within military limits during the progress of the conflict, struggle for acceptance as a new factor in commerce. The year, in so far as the United States was concerned, has been unique. Whereas, on the signing of the Armistice, the other great powers, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan, recognized the importance of aircraft, not only in commerce direct, but as an indispensable element in national defense, and appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars for the encouragement of the art, our Government halted for months between two opinions, with the result that |