A century ago, aviation was taking off in a big way, from the early days of the Wright Flyer to planes flying higher and faster than anyone thought possible, thanks to innovations like General Electric’s turbo-supercharger. Those breakthroughs became crucial in World War II and helped spark aviation growth in Southwest Ohio, especially around Wright Field. Dan Patterson tells that story:
Flying and the men and women who fly can tell you that Faster, Higher and Further is a part of why they fly, and a century ago the sky was literally the limit.
The 1903 Wright Flyer had a 12 horsepower motor and it would fly at a speed not too much faster than a bicycle might go. By the time they were demonstrating their inventions in 1909 their motor developed 40 horsepower and flew at over 40 MPH.
100 years ago and 8 years after the crucible of World War One, Jimmy Doolittle won the Schneider Cup with an average speed of 232 miles per hour, with an engine that was 565 horsepower. That was at sea level. The quest for higher required another solution than just raw power.
General Electric was developing the turbo-supercharger. Dr. Sanford Moss was the engineer who was driving the project. The theory was that an addition to an aircraft engine which could force sea level pressure air into the engine would allow it to run as if it were at sea level.
Seems simple in 2026, but was yet to be proven around the end of WWI.
The simple description is to take the exhaust already being created by the engine, route that through pipes into a compressor which is spinning at very high speed, increase the air pressure and pipe that back into the carburetor. Sea level air pressure. Bingo.
That required very high temperature metals, very precise machining and assemblies which GE had the ability to produce.
Dr. Moss needed to test the system at high altitude and in 1918 they decided on Pikes Peak in Colorado, over 14,000 feet. All that was mounted on Ford Model T trucks — which were not super charged — and they could not get to the top.
Isn’t it ironic that all of the test equipment to prove that high altitude flight was possible was then hauled to the mountaintop with teams of draft horses? After a lot of fits and starts the test was a success, the Liberty engine was producing the same horsepower as it did at sea level. Without the the supercharger the engine was struggling to get to half of that.
The testing now continued back here at McCook Field. GE-equipped Liberty motors were fitted to Packard Le Pere biplanes and test-flown over and around Dayton. The results were pretty amazing with test pilots John McReady and Rudolph “Shorty” Schroeder continuing to set and then break their own records. By the way . . . Shorty was the nickname he was given as he stood at 6 feet 4 inches.
In 1921, MacReady flew the supercharged Le Pere to an over 40,000 feet. This after an earlier flight made by Schroder which set a new world record of 33,000 feet. On that flight he briefly removed his flight goggles while adjusting his oxygen system . . . essential at that altitude. His eyeballs immediately froze. Blind at 33,000 feet! He passed out due to lack of oxygen and the aircraft plummeted nearly six miles. He regained consciousness at the lower altitude and got it back under control. Now nearly totally blind, as his eyeballs thawed out, Schroder was able to make its back to McCook field and land safely. He had to be lifted from the cockpit.
These accomplishments led to the equipment which became standard equipment on the airplanes that flew and fought World War II at altitudes well over 25,000 feet. For example, each B-17 and B-24 had four engines, each engine had a turbosupercharger. The numbers are staggering. Over 12,000 B-17s were built and over 18,000 B-24s. In rough numbers that’s 30,000 bombers with original equipment of 120,000 superchargers. And then spares and replacements had to be made as well. GE and its aviation division was running full speed.
The expertise which GE had perfected in metals and machining is why they were selected to build the first operational jet engines at the end of the war and is why GE took over the then-empty, huge manufacturing facility to build a jet engine mass production facility near Cincinnati in the late 1940s, just an hour drive from Dayton.
The same reasoning to locate near the source of all that federal money made sense.
McCook Field had evolved into Wright Field and would eventually become Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the moths to the flame continued to come here.
For WYSO this is Dan Patterson wishing you Blue Skies and Tailwinds.
Blue Skies & Tailwinds is sponsored by Sinclair Community College and produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.
