Technology & Engineering

A pictoral history of Willow Run - a relative unknown location that became the world's most famous bomber factory during World War II.

In May 1940, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt called for the production of 50,000 military airplanes. He then drafted the president of General Motors, William Knudsen, to mobilize industry in the United States. The automotive companies were called upon to produce a massive fleet of bombers, as well as tanks, trucks, guns, and engines. By the Willow Run, a sleepy little creek near Ypsilanti, Michigan, Ford Motor Company built the world's most famous bomber factory, which was the ultimate manifestation of the automotive industry's role in building armaments during World War II. By the spring of 1944, Willow Run was producing a four-engine B-24 bomber each hour on an assembly line.

Area 51, a top secret military installation for testing unacknowledged, or black, projects, lies in a desert valley northwest of Las Vegas. During the Cold War, CIA and Air Force officials chose this remote location to shield such efforts from foreign spies and US citizens. Although the base has been known by many names—Paradise Ranch, Watertown, and Dreamland, among others—the designation Area 51 has taken root most deeply in the public imagination. Since 1955, it has grown from a temporary camp into a national test facility supporting nearly 2,000 military and civilian workers and dozens of projects, including aircraft capable of cruising at Mach 3 and stealth airplanes that are virtually invisible to radar. Although secrecy surrounding Area 51 spawned rumors of UFOs and reverse-engineered alien spacecraft, declassified photographs provide a rare glimpse into the true nature of America's most famous secret base.

The world's first naval aeronautical station, Naval Air Station Pensacola is a dynamic and active station today.

A sign at the gate of Naval Air Station Pensacola (NASP) welcomes visitors to "The Cradle of Naval Aviation" - and, indeed it is. It came into being when the USS Mississippi (BB-23) arrived in Pensacola on January 20, 1914, with seven aircraft, nine officers, and 23 men. Today, NASP hosts several schools and several branches of the US military. It is also the home of the Navy's Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, as well as the renowned National Naval Aviation Museum (NNAM), which displays more than 100 years of naval aviation, from a replica Curtiss hydroplane to the F-14 Tomcat.

The USS Shenandoah was the pride of the American Navy in 1925 and America's first rigid dirigible. Her name is a Native American word often said to mean Daughter of the Stars. While performing a publicity tour in the Midwest, the ship was ripped to pieces by a violent storm. Fourteen men died, including Lt. Comdr. Zachary Lansdowne, who remained at his post to the very end. The citizens of Noble County, Ohio, were alarmed and amazed when this high-tech, state-of-the-art marvel came tumbling out of the sky into their rural and isolated community. While lavishing care and support on the wounded, the locals also looted the wreckage and made souvenirs of valuable equipment that remained family treasures for years. Tales of daring heroism and sacrifice by those brave sailors on that stormy night soon became the thing of legend to the residents of the valley. For nearly 100 years, people there have maintained the legacy of Shenandoah with monuments, songs, and commemorations that continue to this day.

Go inside the aeronautical history of the Langley Research Center from its beginning.

Following the creation of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1915, a unique flight research operations division was established at the nation's first civilian aeronautics research laboratory, the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. Langley flight research personnel helped the nation's aircraft industry bloom during the Golden Era of aviation throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Langley's flight research then helped win World War II with performance-enhancing modifications to new aircraft. During the Cold War, Langley helped the country maintain an edge in aeronautics over its Warsaw Pact rivals.

When the space race began, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created in 1958 and Langley's pilots were instrumental in training astronauts. In addition to advancing rotorcraft during the 1960s and 1970s, Langley research pioneered a multitude of military and civil Vertical Short Takeoff and Landing (V/STOL) concepts. During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Langley research developed advancements in general and commercial aviation technologies.

An industrial miracle took place at the Fairfax Airport, on the shores of the Missouri River, between 1941 and 1945. A massive factory was quickly built and a large modification center was soon added. At its peak, over 24,000 greater Kansas City-area residents were employed by North American Aviation, Inc. Their goal was to build as many twin-engine B-25 Mitchell medium bombers for wartime service as possible. Their success was the construction of an unprecedented 6,608 aircraft. The B-25 Mitchell served with distinction in every theater of World War II, and significant numbers of them were provided to Allied nations. Many B-25s have been preserved, and some of them remain airworthy today. They can be seen on static display or in flight at air shows all across America.

NASA 's Johnson Space Center (JSC ) in Houston, Texas, has been the home of human spaceflight operations since its inception in 1961. The first US manned spaceflight controlled from its iconic Mission Control Center was in 1965. From JSC 's control center, engineers also helped place humans on another celestial body for the first time, operated 135 Space Shuttle missions, and expanded human spaceflight to an international endeavor. Housed on more than 1,600 acres just south of downtown Houston, the center is the curator for the precious samples returned from the moon, the base for the training
of astronauts, and the developer of innovative engineering to support future exploration deep into the solar system and world-class technical research on earth.

Join author and Huntsville native T. Gary Wicks as he uncovers the beginnings and inventions that influenced air and space engineering in Alabama and America.

The air age in Huntsville began more than a century ago with Will Quick's design and construction of a flying machine, which he demonstrated in 1908 for patenting and manufacture. The space age began in Huntsville a half century later with the advent of Wernher Von Braun's Redstone Jupiter C rocket, which launched America's first satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit in 1958. A decade later, Huntsville was at the epicenter of the greatest technological achievement of the 20th century as the Saturn V rocket propelled humankind to the moon. Nowhere in the world is the century's rapid advance of air and space technology more apparent than in Huntsville. This unique evolution of flying machines and space vehicles unfolds in this pictorial documentary, including the dramatic growth of the research facilities and community infrastructure that produced these remarkable inventions.

Since the dawn of aviation, Idahoans have employed aircraft to carry people, groceries, mail, freight, and livestock over inhospitable terrain. Idaho's airstrips are the stuff of dreams, offering pilots, anglers, hikers, and river-rafters access to deep wilderness less than an hour from the city. Aerial firefighting was born--and is based--in Idaho. Flight instructors in Idaho prepared thousands of pilots to fight in World War II. As the birthplace of United Airlines, with its famed "friendly skies," Idaho is one of the country's most aviation-friendly states. Government officials, private landowners, and volunteers have worked together to create and then preserve an infrastructure of big-city, small-town, and backcountry airstrips that are the envy of pilots worldwide.

McChord Field, tucked away in the Pacific Northwest, maintains an understated presence. Yet this subdued outpost plays a vital role in major conflicts around the world. On July 3, 1940, McChord officially opened as a training base, developing bomber crews for aircraft such as B-17s, B-18s, B-25s, B26s, and even some of the Doolittle Raiders. Strategically located, McChord functioned as an aircraft modification center, producing P-39s, the Soviet Union's most venerable aircraft, as well as a homeland defense center during World War II. The dawning of the Cold War expanded air defense operations with the newly formed Air Defense Command, receiving the P-61, followed by the F-86, F-102, F-106, and F-15. A global airlift hub using C-124s, C-141s, and C-17s, McChord has supported humanitarian, Antarctic, and wartime missions for America.

In 1927, the US Navy floated a small tin hanger down the Detroit River, planting it on a grass airfield at the southern tip of Grosse Ile, Michigan. This established one of the nation's largest and most important bases for training young officers in the art of flight. Nestled among farms and lavish estates, Naval Air Station Grosse Ile (NAS GI) was home to thousands of Navy officers earning their wings before leaving to fight in World War II . Here their story is told through photographs taken by the airmen who flew and lived there, from its beginnings in 1927 to its decommissioning more than 40 years later. This is the story of men such as Pres. George H.W. Bush, who flew torpedo bombers from NAS GI. And this is the story of the ZMC-2, the Navy's only all-metal blimp, constructed at NAS GI. Finally, this is also the story of the current NAS GI. Spared the fate of many decommissioned bases, today Cessnas, Pipers, and Mooneys rest in the same hangars where Corsairs and Phantoms once prowled. Private pilots take flight and land via NAS GI's unmistakable triangle of runways, and students still earn their wings from the same concrete runways where young airmen trained before heading off to fight the Battles of Midway, Coral Sea, and Leyte Gulf.

Commissioned on April 1, 1943, Naval Air Station Wildwood trained thousands of U.S. Navy airmen during World War II. Located in southern New Jersey on a peninsula bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Delaware Bay, the air station was perfectly sited to provide them with the over-water practice they needed for fighting the Japanese fleet in the western Pacific theater. Some of the war's most lethal bombers-Helldivers and TBM-3E Avengers among them-were flown by members of naval fighter, dive-bombing, and torpedo-bombing squadrons based at the station from 1943 until 1945. At least 42 airmen lost their lives while training at the station, but their deaths brought about improvements in airplane design and tactics. Today only a handful of the station's 126 original buildings remain; the largest of these, Hangar No. 1, has been restored to its original appearance and houses Naval Air Station Wildwood Aviation Museum.

Over 200 photographs help paint the picture of the career of Igor I. Sikorsky, one of the most talented and versatile aeronautical pioneers in history.

This book traces the history of Sikorsky aviation and its founder, Igor I. Sikorsky, whose career spanned over 60 years and was highlighted by three major achievements: the creation of the world's first four-engine airliner, the record-breaking Clipper Ships, with which Pan American Airways explored transpacific and transatlantic airline service, and the development of the helicopter. Sikorsky then led his engineers out of the piston-engine era and into the jet age with the design and development of some of the most widely used turbine-powered helicopters in aviation history. Hundreds of photographs, many from the Sikorsky family archives, document the genius of Sikorsky's intuitive engineering, including his lifelong interest in the challenge of the helicopter, which many historians consider to be his crowning achievement.

Rising from the ashes of the Pearl Harbor attack, Barbers Point Naval Air Station would become a major staging point for US Navy aircraft for the war in the Pacific, culminating with the surrender of the Empire of Japan. With the end of World War II in the Pacific and throughout the Cold War, Barbers Point would be home base for the US Navy's fleet of maritime patrol aircraft that hunted the growing threat of Soviet submarines prowling the vast Pacific. From 1942 until its closing in 1999, Barbers Point was the US Navy's only naval air station in the Pacific.

Few would guess Atlantic City has a rich aviation history, being instrumental in many technical advances and playing a key role in the defense of the nation. The wartime role of Naval Air Station Atlantic City, commissioned in 1943, was training naval fighter pilots as well as developing technology and procedures for ground controlled interception of enemy aircraft. After the war, Atlantic City was the site of testing new Navy aircraft as well as the development of all-weather, night-fighting, and attack capabilities. After the Navy left in 1958, the airfield became home to the Federal Aviation Administration's premier research center, a New Jersey Air National Guard jet fighter base, a US Coast Guard air station, and Atlantic City International Airport.