Biplanes to Rocket Science

Problem solving carried out here since 1917 took aviators from Huffman Prairie Flying Field to the moon and back. In the early 1920s, McCook Field near downtown Dayton proved too small to be safe for further experimental aircraft work. Community leaders formed the Dayton Air Service Committee, bought the lands surrounding this bluff, and donated them to the federal government in 1924. Wright Field was then built, keeping the Army Air Corps engineering braintrust in town. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base remains America's premier center for aeronautical research, development, and acquisition, continuing engineering traditions that Orville and Wilbur Wright started when they first learned how to fly over these same fields in 1904.

Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio · United States