Thirty years ago a young War Department clerk named John Mullaney signed an order for a flying machine built by two brothers Wright, Orville and Wilbur, out in Dayton, Ohio. The contraption was specified to go 40 m.p.h. with a 25-h.p., four-cylinder engine.* This Wright machine was not only the first plane bought by the U S.: it was the winged germ of the world's first military flying force. At 54 Clerk Mullaney is still on the job and so is the force for which he bought Wright's ship. In celebrating August...
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