MANAGEMENT IN AVIATION HISTORY BENCH MARKS
Commercial, military and sport
aviation expanded during the 1920s, as did the notion that aircraft could also be used to report forest fi res, facilitate reconnaissance by police, employ air-dropped life-rafts to rescue those in peril on the sea and rush aid to the injured or ill. The futuristic, if not practical design of an air ambulance presented itself on the cover of Popular Mechanics in March of 1928. French inventor, M.P. Delcourt, envisioned his monoplane as “a fl ying ambulance, which is an ordinary motor car when on the ground, but can take a place in a plane and become the body of the ship when it takes to the air.”
Occasionally an article eluded
my category types and can only be described as “odd” or “curious.” There were several of these diverse stories of which one requires repeating. Within the December 1929 issue of Popular Mechanics was the short
story of a blackmail scheme gone bad (for the blackmailer) living in Hamburg, Germany. It seems that the ransom note was sent to the intended victim attached to a carrier pigeon. Alerted to this fowl note, the local constables enlisted the help of private pilots to track the fl ight of the bird back to its cage. In this way they captured the blackmailer and therefore established a new use of aircraft for fi ghting crime. Imagine a giant manned kite
developed for observation in lieu of balloons; an entire U-shaped fl oating airport for water as well as hard surface landings; fi xed wing aircraft landing on sky-scrapers in New York City or attaching your small private aircraft beneath a commercial airliner until released close to your landing destination. Nothing was too far afi eld for the aviation-minded during the 1920s, and Popular Mechanics printed it all. As we enter 2020, there will be
many opportunities to look back 100
years at the American experience in aviation when women shortened their hair, and their skirts, to became “fl appers,” and couples danced to aviation-themed music like “The Lindy Hop.” Great advancements as well as great sacrifi ces were made during the era known as “the roaring twenties.” Treat yourself to the free vintage
digital issues of Popular Mechanics at:
https://books.google.com/ books/about/Popular_Mechanics. html?id=y94DAAAAMBAJ
Giacinta Bradley Koontz
is an aviation historian, magazine columnist and author who has received the
DAR History Medal and honorable mention from the New York Book Festival. She has appeared on the History Channel and in PBS documentaries. For more information, visit
www.GiaBKoontz.com.
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DOMmagazine.com | dec 2019 jan 2020
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