Biplanes to Rocket Science

Here, on Wright Brothers Hill, on all sides you are surrounded by the vast research complexes and runways of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Problem solving done here since 1917 has taken aviators from Huffman Prairie Flying Field to the moon and back.<br><br>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, buying the lands surrounding this bluff and donating them to the federal government in 1924. Wright Field was then built, keeping the Army Air Corps engineering braintrust in town.<br><br>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.