Internet Bookwatch - Orville’s Aviators

Orville’s Aviators

John Carver Edwards

McFarland & Company

PO Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640

www.mcfarlandpub.com

9780786442270, $45.00, www.amazon.com

n While the brothers Wilber and Orville Wright are famous for being responsible for the first manned airflight at Kittyhawk, what is not so well known is that afterwards they established the first aviator flight training school in the country. The Wright Brothers’ School of Aviation was very active in Ohio from 1910 to 1916, training 113 men who shared their love of flying. The history of that flight school and the profiling of six of its graduates is the subject of “Orville’s Aviators: Outstanding Alumni of the Wright Flying School, 1910-1916″ by John Carver Edwards (University Archivist, University of Georgia). Here are the fascinating personal stories of Arthur L. Welsh (a Russian immigrant who rose to become Orville Wright’s chief instructor); Howard Warfield Gill (heir to an international tea dynasty); Archibald Freeman (who flour-bag bombing of Boston Harbor resulted in his becoming an early exponent of the supremacy of air power in war); Grover Cleveland Bergdoll (whose promise as a pilot ultimately went unfulfilled); George A. Gray (whose wife joined him to become an aerial exhibition team); and Howard Max Rinehart (aerial mercenary, international racing competitor, Wright Brothers test pilot, South American explorer, and co-owner of one of America’s premier air charter services). Informed and informative, deftly written and superbly documented, “Orville’s Aviators” is a seminal work of superb scholarship and highly recommended for personal reading lists as well as academic and community library Aviation History reference collections.