Wings Assignment #2- Taylor McKinley

      1. Did flight have any influence outside of aviation? If so, how?

Flight absolutely influenced life outside of aviation.  The first example I’d like to mention is the influence of aviation on art.  Several artists, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Anatole France, and Pierre Loti, were in the crowd of the thousands of people who went to Issy-les-Moulineaux to watch the flying.  Picasso and Braque took the inspiration that they received from this event and turned it into art by building model airplanes.  Picasso also produced “Still Life: Our Future Is in the Air,” a commentary on aviation’s importance to the defense of the nation.

Poets were also captivated by the wonders of aviation.  Italian poet and novelist Gabriele D’Annunzio proclaimed that aviation was a “divine thing” and even asked the question, “Where is the poet who will be capable of singing this new epic?”  Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a wealthy Italian poet, was enthusiastic to try and fulfill this inquiry.  He wrote that airplanes were among the most potent symbols of modernity.

7. What was the cult of the heroic airman?

As said in the book, the cult of the heroic airman “began as a natural extension of the adulation lavished on the aeronautical heroes of the prewar era.”  In other words, the cult encompassed the young men who wanted to fly the new airplanes during the first World War.  The book also makes the point that it seemed an obvious choice that men would flock to be pilots in the war.  An infantryman explained, “Here was I in mud up to my knees, [while those] other fellows were sailing around in the clean air.”  He later became an aviator.  The book compares the aviator to a “Medieval knight, boldly carrying the national standard into combat with a champion from the other side.”  Obviously, these men were portrayed to be heroic and bold, which created this notion of the “cult of the heroic airman”—who wouldn't want to be portrayed as someone of these characteristics?

9. What was the state of military aviation after WWI?

After World War I, military aviation was demobilized.  The strength of the U.S. Army Air Service fell from 190,000 officers and enlisted men in November 1918 to 27,000 six months later.  $100,000,000 in contracts for things to build airplanes such as engines, airframes, and accessories were cancelled abruptly.  Total annual aircraft production fell from 14,000 in 1918, the wartime peak, to 263 in 1922.  Ninety percent of the factory space devoted to aviation during the war had been redeployed by 1919. 

After the war, all of its industries suffered, but aviation manufacturers were unique in that they had no other market to turn to for sales after the war.  William Boeing and his company were an example of this, as their company resorted to building wooden furniture until a new army contract came about in 1921, giving the company what they needed to be back in the airplane business.