Facility in Augusta, Georgia circa 1911

The Wright Flying School, also known as the Wright School of Aviation, was operated by the Wright Company from 1910 to 1916 and trained 119 individuals to fly Wright airplanes.

History

Orville Wright began training students on March 19, 1910 in Montgomery, Alabama at a site that later became Maxwell Air Force Base. With the onset of milder weather that May, the school relocated to Huffman Prairie Flying Field near Dayton, Ohio, where the Wrights developed practical aviation in 1904 and 1905 and where the Wright Company tested its airplanes. They also had a facility in Augusta, Georgia run by Frank Coffyn.[1] Some of the earliest graduates became members of the Wright Exhibition Team.

Sites

National Park Service marker at the location of the Huffman Prairie Flying Field school


Notable students

References

  1. ^ a b "Aviation School Starts In Augusta. Among Coffyn's First Pupils Are Robert Collier and J. S. Burgess". Atlanta Constitution. January 15, 1911. Retrieved 2010-11-02.
  2. ^ "Aviator Parmelee Plunges to Death. Caught by Treacherous Gust of Wind While Giving Exhibition Flight in Washington State". New York Times. June 2, 1912. Retrieved 2007-07-21. Philip Parmelee, the aviator, was killed here today while giving an exhibition flight from the fair grounds. Parmalee was the flying partner of Clifford Turpin, whose airship flew into the grandstand at Seattle Thursday, killing two persons and injuring fifteen.
  3. ^ "Parmalee is Killed". Los Angeles Times. June 2, 1912. Retrieved 2009-08-04. Aviation Star Has Fatal Fall. Graduate of Wright School Meets His Death at North Yakima, Wash. Biplane in High Wind Flutters and Dives from Four Hundred Feet. His Fiancee Is Among First to Reach Crushed Body of Fallen Birdman. Gives Life as Toll to Aerial Navigation.
  4. ^ "At 23 Woman Who Eloped Joins Navigators of the Air." New York Sun. March 30, 1914.
  5. ^ a b "Stinson Field". National Park Service. Archived from the original on 2007-12-27. Retrieved 2009-09-04.
  6. ^ "Lieut. Hazelhurst and Al Welsh, Professional Aviator, Victims of Airship Test". New York Times. June 12, 1912. Retrieved 2009-09-04. Lieut. Leighton W. Hazelhurst, Jr., of the Seventeenth Infantry, one of the most promising of the younger aviators of the army, and Al Welsh, one of the most daring professional aviators in America, were instantly killed in a flight at the Army Aviation School at College Park, Md., at 6:30 o'clock this evening.

External links

Wright brothers / Wright Company / Wright Aeronautical
Authority control databases
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