On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright achieved the first free, controlled flight of a power-driven, heavier-than-air plane, and later that day Wilbur Wright piloted the Wright Flyer in the brothers' longest flight of the day, lasting 59 seconds and covering 852 feet. American military aviation began in 1907, when the Department of War established an Aeronautical Division to oversee military ballooning, air machines, related subjects, and future experiments under strict confidentiality, and its active strength that year was 3 personnel. Over the decades, air power was built not only by combat aviators but also by scientists, engineers, businessmen, craftsmen, women pilots who delivered aircraft and later served as air warriors, trainers at airstrips across America, millions of enlisted and officer Airmen who operated bases and maintained aircraft, and the many Americans whose support helped create a formidable Air Force.