Fitzgerald and Flight
A licensed pilot and early advocate of flying, Fitzgerald was acquainted with Wright brothers. Rep. Fitzgerald was called an "aerial daredevil" of Congress by The New York Times for flying the 500-odd miles from Dayton to Washington for the reconvening of the lame duck session of Congress in 1922 (though that flight was piloted by someone else). In Dayton, he secured the location of Wright Field (now part of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base). His interest in flying led him, in 1927, to urge that the Air Force be reorganized as an independent department of the national defense. "The recent oceanic flights", he said at the time, "coupled with the preliminary tests of heavy bombing planes, have startled the world with the tremendous power of aviation. Aircraft have generally appeared to be the cheapest instruments of defense. Now they prove themselves to be one of the most powerful."
Read more about this topic: Roy G. Fitzgerald
Famous quotes containing the words fitzgerald and/or flight:
“I don’t want to live—I want to love first, and live incidentally.”
—Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948)
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)