A time capsule of American aviation

It’s a brisk winter day with the promise of snow flurries tonight, so that makes it a fine time to stay warm indoors and pick a fun publication to read. From my childhood, I remember my Dad’s vintage aviation magazine collection, something that has passed to me. It’s almost a mirror of his career and lifelong interest in aviation design and engineering.

I pulled a 1924 issue of “Aviation” magazine from the shelf, something that predates Dad’s career, but meshes with his youthful interest in all things aeronautical. What a fabulous window on the world of flight barely a couple decades after the Wright brothers set the course.

One of the first things that comes to light is the name Edmund T. Allen in the short list of contributing editors. The world knows Eddie Allen as the test pilot with the engineer’s brain, who flew so many classic Boeing products. Allen lost his life in the crash of an XB-29 Superfortress at the edge of Boeing Field on Feb. 18, 1943.

Less well known is the fact that Eddie Allen joined the Army Signal Corps during World War I and, after a stint as an instructor pilot, he was sent to England by the Army to study British flight test rationale. After World War I, Allen flew as a test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at Langley Field, a prestigious credential. He subsequently was a civilian test pilot at McCook Field, part of the Air Service’s Ohio test holdings. From 1925-1927, he flew DH-4 mailplanes over Wyoming. 

Eddie Allen’s career arc took him ever closer to Boeing products, and while he freelanced first flights for other manufacturers, by 1939 he was named Boeing’s Research Division chief, with responsibility for flight test, aerodynamics research, and wind tunnels.

In the Oct. 13, 1924, issue of “Aviation,” Allen reported on light plane aspects of the 1924 Dayton Air Meet, an exhibition and air racing venue that showcased the aeronautical state of the art, and moved to different cities in different years. Allen noted a number of designs that relied on vee motorcycle engines for power. As if to maximize the contrast between light planes and the Army’s ponderous Barling bomber, which was also at the air meet, Allen noted: “…the great Bomber has heaved its heavy way around the field.”

Another “Aviation” contributor, C.G. Grey, was more direct in his appraisal of the Barling: “It flies, and that is all one can say for it.”

Not satisfied with that description, he added: “As a war machine, it is perfectly useless, for it is too slow even for an aerial funeral.”

Grey was editor of the British magazine “The Aeroplane,” in town for the Dayton meet. 

The tenor of reporting on the 1924 Dayton meet was one of disappointment in an apparent lack of aeronautical progress exhibited by the Army Air Service. “Aviation” ran an editorial saying: “The unanimous opinion of every engineer, constructor, and pilot that voiced any opinion of the races at Dayton was that the year’s progress by the Army Air Service in the development of aircraft had been nil.”

Those 1924 editorial comments about the Air Service are interesting for their take-no-prisoners directness. We have the benefit of nearly a century of hindsight with which to acknowledge how the Air Service evolved and matured to become an indispensable and high-performing component of the Allied victory in World War II a couple decades later, and on to its life as a separate military branch ever after.

The advertisements in this 1924 magazine reveal an American aviation scene bustling and finding its way. Matthew B. Sellers offered his services as a consulting aeronautical engineer. Haven’t heard of Sellers? He held the first patent for retractable landing gear. 

For $750, you could buy a used Curtiss JN-4D Jenny said to be in excellent condition. Or, unpack your own brand-new Jenny from the crates for $1,250. New OX-5 motors were offered for $450 apiece. Another ad offered: “Fly them yourself. Jennies by the hour.”

This 1924 issue of “Aviation” is a microcosm of the post-World War I aviation scene in America. The air-minded segment of the population was impatient for aeronautical advancements, yet in some ways those advances were held back by a glut of war surplus Jennies and OX-5 engines that were offered to civilians on the cheap, while the Air Service had to contend with other rapidly aging World War I biplanes like the DH-4 that looked frugal on paper compared to new designs. 

It would take a few more years for the war surplus planes and parts to sift out of the market before new designs could really take precedence. Decades later during World War II, Army Air Forces chief Hap Arnold would recall how the Air Service was saddled with obsolete warplanes from World War I in the 1920s, and he vowed to rid the Air Force of aging bombers and fighters, scrapping many of them to clear the way for post-World War II designs, lest a penny-pinching Congress try to win the next war with the last war’s planes.