Aviation

Ever since the Wright brothers began selling airplanes, there’s always been a mystique about the airplane owner. Not everyone can or will buy one. Seventy years ago, one man tried to make buying an airplane as easy as buying a shirt.

An effort to preserve the original Wright Brothers airplane factory got a boost Wednesday when Governor John Kasich signed the state’s 2014 capital budget. The historic site could become part of Dayton’s national aviation park system. 

Demolition has already started at the former Delphi plant on Home Avenue where the Wright Factory is located. The National Aviation Heritage Alliance hopes to purchase the historic buildings and 20 surrounding acres. A private developer owns the land now. 

Seventy years ago, the country was deep into World War Two, and the US was on the offensive in the air.  Commentator Dan Patterson says that the big US four engine bombers were being shot down in shocking numbers.

Think about this: on one mission, we lost sixty bombers.  That's six hundred men.  It was just too much.

The US needed a fighter plane with long pegs, one that could go all way deep into Germany and protect the bombers, essentially win the air war and provide the long sought after supremacy of the air.

Russia has our attention now, with the Sochi Winter Olympics about to open on February 7th. This got our aviation commentator Dan Patterson thinking about the vast country and how it is connected by flight. And Dan brings us back to the early days of aviation when the Russians were building and flying unique aircraft to shorten those distances.

History is broken down into the moments we remember about our own lives, like weddings and birthdays and graduations, and then there are days when we pause to remember together, as a nation, an event that affected us all.

Pearl Harbor Day, just passed, when Japanese pilots attacked American navy ships north of Honolulu, is one of those, even though it's now more than 7 decades passed. Commentator Dan Patterson finds himself finds himself turning it over and over in his mind.