News & Events

Dick Rutan, Jeana Yeager and Burt Rutan

Inducted in 1987

Voyager, First To Circumnavigate The Globe Non-Stop Without Refueling, 1986

Burt Rutan, 1943 –

Dick Rutan, 1938 –

Jeana Yeager, 1952 –

The “Voyager” was the first airplane to circumnavigate the globe non-stop, without refueling. The journey began on December 14, 1986, at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and ended nine days later at the same place.

Designer Burt Rutan and pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager had devoted five years to building and flight-testing the airplane. Constructed of composite materials, Voyager’s total weight was 9,000 pounds, including 7,000 pounds of fuel. The canard wing design, or forward elevator, similar to that successfully used by the Wright brothers in 1903, provided additional lift and improved the plane’s efficiency and range.

The Voyager opened the door for a new generation of airplanes. Capable of flying over 28,000 miles without refueling, it’s performance far surpassed the range of other aircraft.

Walter R. Brookins

Inducted in 1986

The First Civilian Pilot, 1910

1888 – 1953

The Wright brothers realized that if the science of aviation were to develop, it would first be necessary to win public acceptance of flight throughout the United States. This required that a demonstration team be assembled to fly exhibitions. The first pilot hired for the team was Walter Richard Brookins, a Dayton native and long-time student and friend of the Wrights.

Brookins learned to fly in 1909 at the Wrights’ flight school near Montgomery, Alabama, on what is now a portion of Maxwell Air Force Base. He made his first solo flight after only two and one-half hours of instructional flying. This qualified Brookins to be appointed the Wrights’ first instructor to train pilots for the new Wright Exhibition Team.

Brookins soon became one of the most legendary exhibition flyers in America, setting world records for altitude, cross-country flight and endurance. In 1910 in New Jersey, he flew to an altitude of 6,175 feet in a Wright biplane, becoming the first to fly a mile high.

Captain Bruce McCandless II

Inducted in 1985

First Man To Walk In Space Untethered, 1984

1937 – 2017

Challenger’s February 1984 flight was America’s tenth space shuttle mission and the first spacecraft of any nation to end its celestial travels at the site where it was launched. On February 7, 1984, five days into the mission, Captain Bruce McCandless, Mission Specialist, became the first human to walk in space without a safety line.

After waiting 18 years to make his first space flight, McCandless stepped free from Challenger into the blackness of space for a 90-minute space walk traveling as far as 320 feet from the orbiter. Using a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), McCandless opened a new frontier in practical space walking and revolutionized man’s ability to survive and work in space.

Commander Theodore G. Ellyson

Inducted in 1984

First United States Naval Aviator, 1911

1885 – 1928

Theodore “Spuds” Ellyson began training in 1910 at the Glen Curtiss flight training school in San Diego and was Curtiss’ first seaplane pupil. As the United States Navy’s first pilot, Lieutenant Ellyson accompanied Curtiss on test flights of the first practical seaplane on January 26, 1911.

Flying a Curtiss seaplane, Ellyson and Navy Lieutenant J. H. Towers made the longest over-water flight yet attempted in October 1911. They flew from Annapolis, Maryland, to within two miles of Fort Monroe, Virginia, traveling over the Chesapeake Bay nearly the entire flight.

Ellyson was at the controls for the first successful catapult launch of the Curtis A-1 “Flying Boat” from an anchored barge at the Washington Navy Yard in November 1912. This was an important early step toward flying airplanes from ships and led to the development of aircraft carriers.

Commander Ellyson was a leader in naval aviation until he was killed in a crash off Hampton Roads, Virginia, in February 1928. Ironically, his plane came ashore at the same site his predecessor, Eugene Ely, landed his aircraft in November 1910 after the first successful takeoff from a naval vessel.

Charles Edward Taylor

Inducted in 1983

The World’s First Airplane Mechanic

1869 – 1956

Charlie Taylor was a silent but essential participant in the Wright Brothers’ success story at Kitty Hawk. In six weeks he built the 12-horsepower engine that powered the first successful flying machine, the Wright Flyer.

Taylor was hired by the Wright’s as a machinist at the Wright Cycle Company in Dayton, Ohio. His only prior experience with a gasoline engine was an attempt to repair one in an automobile in 1901. “Never did get it to work,” he stated later.

Taylor’s pioneering career in aviation mechanics spanned more than sixty years. After the first successful flights in 1903, he performed all of the preliminary engine design work for the Wrights and later taught them to build aircraft engines. He travelled with Orville to Fort Meyer, Virginia in 1908 during test flights for the United States government and was with Wilbur at the 1909 Hudson-Fulton flights in New York. Taylor later served as Calbraith Rodgers’ lead mechanic during his first transcontinental flight in 1911.

Albert Scott Crossfield

Inducted in 1982

First To Fly Three Times The Speed Of Sound, 1960

1921 – 2006

On December 10, 1960, a North American Aviation X-15 was launched from beneath the wing of a modified Boeing B-52 while in flight. Pilot Scott Crossfield ignited the rocket barrels, pushing the sleek black bullet-shaped aircraft to a higher altitude and a greater speed than ever before, thus becoming the first man to travel three times the speed of sound, over 2,000 miles per hour.

Crossfield is one of America’s earliest rocket test pilots. While working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, now NASA, Crossfield made many high speed test flights in aircraft such as the F-100 and the F-102 supersonic fighters, the X-1, X-4, and X-5 rocket planes and the Douglas 558-2 Skyrocket. On November 20, 1953, he set four speed records before becoming the first man to reach Mach 2 (twice the speed of sound) in the air-launched, rocket-propelled D-558-2.

During the late 1950s, Crossfield helped design and engineer the X-15 at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and was the project’s first test pilot.

Alberto Santos-Dumont

Inducted in 1981

First To Fly A Heavier-Than-Air Machine In Europe, 1906

1873 – 1932

Brazilian-born, French-educated Alberto Santos-Dumont achieved the first officially observed powered European flight on October 23, 1906, in France. By flying nearly 200 feet in the “14-bis,” he won the Deutsch-Archdeacon Prize of 3,000 francs for surpassing 25 meters (about 80 feet). On November 12, 1906, he improved upon this performance by flying 722 feet in 21 seconds and won the Aero-Club de France prize of 1,500 francs for the first flight of at least 100 meters (240 feet). This flight fell three years and 150 feet short of what the Wright brothers accomplished in 1903 at Kitty Hawk.

Santos-Dumont was probably one of only a few aviation pioneers who could claim significant accomplishments in both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air flying machines. His early experiments were in dirigible airships of his own design. After many failures, he built a dirigible that in 1901 won the Deutsch Prize, as well as a prize from the Brazilian government, for being the first to fly in a given time from Saint-Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and return.

In the United States, Wilbur Wright had flown as far as 24 miles by October 1905, but in Europe little progress had been made. Realizing this, Santos-Dumont abandoned lighter-than-air dirigibles and turned his attention to heavier-than-air machines. After two failed attempts, he finally coaxed his awkward biplane, designed on the principle of the box kite, off the ground in October 1906. With this success he became the third man in the entire world to fly a powered aircraft.

A machine he produced in 1909 solidified Santos-Dumont’s reputation as an airplane designer. The famous Demoiselle (or Grasshopper) monoplane was the forerunner of the modern light plane. In 1928 Santos-Dumont returned to Brazil where, depressed over the use of aircraft in war, he committed suicide.

Major General Benjamin D. Foulois

Inducted in 1980

First United States Military Aviator

1879 – 1967

Benjamin “Benny” Delahauf Foulois is considered the “father of U.S. military aviation” since he was the first United States officer assigned to pilot a military airplane. In December 1909, Lieutenant Foulois was ordered to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, with instructions to “take plenty of parts and teach yourself to fly.”

Guided via correspondence with Orville Wright, Foulois flew the Army Aeroplane Model 1, a Wright Model A, in March 1910. He experienced his first take-off, solo flight, landing and crash in the space of one day.

A year later, Foulois and Philip Parmalee, a civilian pilot trained by the Wrights, made the first military reconnaissance flight during maneuvers along the Rio Grande. Lieutenant Foulois was later promoted to Major General and served as Chief of the Army Air Service until his retirement in 1935.

First Transatlantic Flight 1919

Inducted in 1979

Lieutenant Commander Albert Read, US Navy

Lieutenant James Breese, US Navy

Ensign Herbert Rodd, US Navy

Lieutenant Elmer Stone, US Coast Guard

Lieutenant Walter Hinton, US Navy

Chief Mechanic’s Mate Eugene Rhoads, US Navy

Commander Albert Read and crew, in their fuel laden Curtiss NC-4 “flying boat,” lifted off the waters of the Newfoundland coast on May 16, 1919. The NC-4 was one of three four-engine Navy planes attempting the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

On the first day each plane fared well. They maintained constant radio contact with Navy ships positioned at 50-mile intervals along the route. Conditions changed on the second day. Dense fog and heavy rains forced the NC-1 and NC-3 to land at sea. All of the crewmen were rescued, but the two airplanes were damaged beyond repair.

The NC-4 continued through the fog and bad weather to the Azores Island and waited for the weather to clear. The NC-4 reached Lisbon, Portugal, on May 27, completing the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an airplane in 27 hours’ flight time.

This feat was accomplished a scant 19 days before two British flyers, John Alcock and Albert Brown, made the first non-stop transatlantic air flight, crossing from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16.5 hours on June 15, 1919

Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr.

Inducted in 1978

First American To Orbit The Earth, 1962

1921 -2016

On February 20, 1962, Lieutenant Colonel John Glenn, Jr., United States Marine Corps, lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 9:47 a.m. in a small Mercury capsule. Five hours and three earth orbits later, he splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. The 81,000-mile trip made Glenn the first American to orbit the earth.

“Friendship 7” was propelled into space by a powerful Atlas rocket. Though delayed several times, the launch was flawless. However, the automatic steering rockets malfunctioned at the end of the first orbit, forcing Glenn to assume manual control.  Shortly after, an electronic indicator warned that the capsule’s heat shield might have come loose. Inspections later found that it was the indicator, not the critically important heat shield, that had failed.

Glenn guided “Friendship 7” back to earth, demonstrating that an astronaut could cope with in-flight emergencies. This flight was the first significant step toward the ultimate goal of landing on the moon in July 1969.