A Fifth Grade Presentation

Note:  The book (and below conversation) begins with my daughter's question

      ”If my great-great uncle is so famous, why hasn’t anyone outside of this museum ever heard of him?” asked my ten-year old daughter with a frown as she looked at a photograph of Lowell Smith in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.  “Don’t people have to know who you are in order for you to be famous?”

      “That picture of him is the same one that you used in your drawing,” I replied, hoping to distract Jamie since I really had no answer for her.  The photograph of Lowell Smith in the information display ringing his 1920’s biplane was the same picture that the Smithsonian had posted on its official webpage.  It was also the photograph Jamie had used in sketching a portrait of her adventurous great-great uncle for a fifth grade report and oral presentation concerning a famous American.  Much to Jamie’s reluctance, I had convinced her to present Lowell Smith for her fifth-grade project rather than her choice of Amelia Earhart.  My motivation in interfering with Jamie’s academic choices was an attempt to tie in American history with personal family legacy by showing her Lowell’s plane during our planned summer vacation away from Los Angeles to the nation’s capital.  My daughter’s oral presentation during class that winter wasn’t the roaring success that I had envisioned because none of her classmates thought Lowell Smith was very famous.  Jamie also got tripped up in trying to explain how Lowell was her father’s granduncle and her great-great grandma’s brother; further convincing the class that Lowell Smith wasn’t a real famous American.

      “Don’t change the subject, Dad.”

      “Your great-great uncle did some great-great things:  Sixteen world flight records before 1924, first man to refuel in midair, and he was part of the air race that changed the world.”

Chicago: The Most Important Flying Machine in History

There is a reason that Lowell Smith's plane was given the honor of being the first aircraft brought into the Smithsonian.  The Wright Flyer l (the first airplane to ever fly) was given the honor of following the Chicago into the museum.  The Chicago, the airplane to first fly around the world, is the most historically important flying machine every built.  It is the original Douglas Cruiser from which all others McDonnell Douglas aircraft with DC in their name are derived (DC-10 etc.).  Because of the Chicago, the American aviation industry went from an international joke lacking in technological know-how and infrastructure, to the world leader.  The Chicago, and First World Flight, were sparks that ignited the American aircraft industry, reshaped the economic might of nations, and gave the United States the aviation backbone and industrial infrastructure to win a second World War.

     Flying around the earth in the 1920s was the equivalent of flying to the moon in the 1960s.  Aviation historians point out that the twelve years of technical development separating Sputnik-1 from Apollo 11 was the same amount of time that elapsed between when the US Army purchased their first Wright Brother’s airplane to when they successfully circumnavigated the earth by air.  These historians believe that the logistics of getting around the earth in the context of the 1920s was far greater than getting to the moon in the 1960s after over a decade of satellite technology and unmanned space travel.   They also credit First Lieutenant Robert Brown Junior, who created and lead the Army’s First World Flight logistics team, as the genius laying the collaborative engineering blueprint and groundwork that would evolve into NASA.  When you learn that a total of 36 USS Navy support ships, including two battleships, were required during just one day's worth of flying in the Northern Atlantic, you been to appreciate the enormity of the challenge and Brown’s genius.  And when you learn that two planes were still lost to the North Atlantic despite all of the US Army's and Navy’s support, you begin to realize that the 1920s was a very different world from ours:  A world in which American pilots had neither radio or parachutes (both had to be taken out for weight reasons in order to have enough fuel to fly between landing spots).
 

     In 1925 no American could possibly fathom any other American not knowing the basics of how the United States won perhaps the greatest race in all of recorded history.  In 1925 no American could possibly understand how the amazing accomplishments of the airmen would change the world and forever shape the destiny of humankind. 

     Part of the explanation of why Lowell Smith (who was chronicled by the same man that made Lawrence of Arabia famous, accomplished a task much tougher than getting to the moon, and developed both in-flight refueling and the system for mass parachuting deployed on D-Day) is not a household name in America is due to the loyalty he displayed for a man that Gary Cooper depicted in a movie titled The Court Marshall of Billy Mitchell".  The movie explains how Billy Mitchell, who is now considered the father of the US Air Force, was betrayed by the military establishment of the time and robbed of his honor.  When Lowell Smith and the pilots of the First World Flight stood up for Billy Mitchell, both publically and in court, certain very powerful people in Washington began a purposeful campaign to get Americans to forget about the remarkable achievements of the World Flyers.  A campaign so successful that it resulted in current Americans being unaware of their own legacy.

     Part of the purpose of Chasing Horizons is, after nearly 100 years, to finally set the record straight and remember the men responsible for one of America's most remarkable achievements:  An achievement for all Americans to be immensely proud of and an achievement that altered, for the better, the very course of human history and the subsequent events of the twentieth century.

Contact Jim at  jim@jimbolander.com