Document created: 1 Feb 2007
Air & Space Power Journal Book Review - Summer 2007
Realizing the Dream of Flight: Biographical Essays in Honor
of the Centennial of Flight, 1903–2003 edited by Virginia P. Dawson and Mark
D. Bowles. NASA History Division (http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/history.html),
300 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20546, 2005, 326 pages, $20.00 (hardcover). To
order, write the NASA Center for Aerospace Information, 7121 Standard Drive,
Hanover, Maryland 21076. Available online at http://history.nasa.gov/sp4112.pdf.
Realizing the Dream of Flight, an anthology edited by Virginia Dawson and Mark
Bowles, consists of academic papers presented at a conference celebrating 100
years of flight; it also includes a DVD recording of the conference proceedings.
Expertly edited, finely produced, and containing a useful index, this book, like
most anthologies, does not rely upon a common theme beyond aviation and space,
and the papers vary in quality. The contributors, many of whom deal with their
own particular research interests, are highly qualified historians and good
writers, but only Alan Gropman has any practical experience with combat
aviation.
His essay deals with Gen Benjamin O. Davis Jr., a principal player in the
painful integration of blacks into the armed forces of the United States and one
of the foundations of Gropman’s seminal book, The Air Force Integrates,
1945–1964 (1978). The other essay under the category “Military Strategists” (see
the book’s introduction, p. xi) is Tami Davis Biddle’s piece about Gen Curtis E.
LeMay, a central player in her important book Rhetoric and Reality in Air
Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing,
1914–1945 (2002). Neither Davis nor LeMay was present at the creation of
aviation, which had matured a fair amount by the time they got their wings. If
the conference needed to include military operators in the story, then one
wonders about the total absence of naval aviators.
In the first two essays, feminist scholars Amy Sue Bix and Susan Ware write
about Bessie Coleman and Amelia Earhart, respectively. Closer to the creation of
aviation, Coleman did not attain the fame that accompanied Earhart, and both
women died in aircraft accidents at a young age, cutting short any further
contributions they might have made. Ware does make the valid point that women
seemed to play a greater role in the barnstorming age than they did after
aviation became more profitable, laying that fact at the feet of gender
discrimination. But Betty Friedan’s great book The Feminine Mystique (1963)
makes the point that the first wave of feminism died out after passage of the
19th Amendment and did not revive until the second wave got rolling in the
1960s. I think she explained that, as a cultural phenomenon, it included the
ideas of many women as well as male prejudices. In any event, both aviatrixes
had an important moral and financial supporter—a male in both cases.
The anthology also includes three fine essays by William M. Leary, W. David Lewis, and Roger Bilstein on the emergence of aviation as a profitable enterprise during the 1930s. Leary addresses the collaboration of Charles Lindbergh and Juan Trippe in the building of Pan American Airways; Lewis writes about the part played by Eddie Rickenbacker, Johnny Miller, and Eastern Airlines in airmail service; and Bilstein offers an account of Donald Douglas’s rise and fall. Later on, Tom D. Crouch, Michael Gorn, Andrew J. Dunar, and Roger Launius—all fine historians of air and space technology—contribute chapters about the genesis and maturing of the space age. Most of them deal with figures not well known to Air Force officers: Willy Ley, a space writer; Hugh Dryden, a scientist and manager; and Robert Gilruth, a mover and shaker in the manned spaceflight program who lived in the shadow of the astronauts. The other essay—about Wernher von Braun, who was present at the creation of the space age—is a stimulating piece.
The other chapters are probably sufficient for any Air Force officer’s professional reading program, but he or she will want to go to Gropman’s book on integration and Biddle’s on strategic bombing for the detail necessary to the military profession. The essays on commercial aviation and NASA space development are summaries often drawn from other books but sufficient for the modern air warrior. Even though Realizing the Dream of Flight does not form a coherent whole, it might deserve a middling place on officers’ reading lists if they already have a pretty firm grasp of the history of air and space power.
Dr. David R. Mets
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
Disclaimer
[ Home Page| Feedback? Contact the Editor ]