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May 24, 2025 14 mins
A historical series that narrates the significant events and figures that shaped the nation's past, offering educational and engaging stories. The episodes highlight the spirit of exploration and perseverance.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
American Trail, Ah, the American Trail blazed in Blood, Depended

(00:20):
in Blood, Chapter twelve, The Blue.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Yonder m HM. The night of December sixteenth, nineteen hundred.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Three, You or the right lying there in bed, still
awake midnight, bit her cold outside the cabin, when driving
the sand.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
Across the Kitty Hawk Dune? What are you thinking of?
Lilian paul Otto Lilianhaal, a German named Lilienthal who wanted

(01:39):
to fly, crashed in his blinder dead seven years you
had better luck or the right, You and your brother Wilburn.

Speaker 5 (01:55):
More than one thousand glidder flights last year, still alive.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
You learned a lot how to control your glider against
every kind of wind, prepared you for what you're trying
to do now to fly a heavier than air machine.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
All this will can't you sleep?

Speaker 5 (02:17):
E there?

Speaker 4 (02:19):
Brother Wilbur, always you two inseparable partners in business back
home in Dayton, Ohio, selling repairing bicycles, but always consumed
by one great ambition to be the first one to
fly an air o wind.

Speaker 5 (02:38):
We've built it.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Interesting observation.

Speaker 4 (02:42):
I just realized we've actually built a flying machine.

Speaker 6 (02:46):
Tomorrow I'll test it fly it not unless this wind slacking.

Speaker 5 (02:52):
It'll go down the morning, you know.

Speaker 6 (02:55):
Or in my quiet, modest way, I was just reflecting
that you and I know more about aviation than the.

Speaker 5 (03:01):
Rest of the world put together. I suppose we do it.

Speaker 4 (03:03):
That we're geniuses, even if we never did go to college.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
We even build our own engine.

Speaker 4 (03:10):
Yes, awful, a few months ago in your workshop in Dayton.

Speaker 5 (03:16):
Remember, there's no use. Will another turned down.

Speaker 4 (03:19):
I don't think we'll get any automobile company that build
us an engine.

Speaker 5 (03:22):
Yeah, they're sensitive about looking stupid.

Speaker 7 (03:24):
Yeah, letting people think a flying machine as possible.

Speaker 6 (03:27):
It occurs to me, old boy, we might build our own.

Speaker 4 (03:33):
Then weeks of hard work, buying, making parts, fitting them together.

Speaker 5 (03:39):
Well, I guess we'll have.

Speaker 7 (03:40):
To run the crank shaft for and aft, start the
motor from the rear.

Speaker 6 (03:44):
Why no, No, the propellers will do that. A turn
of the propeller.

Speaker 5 (03:54):
Always like that.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
Two minds working as one, others worked along. They failed,
But you, Orville, you and your brother, you supplement each other.
Then one day back there in Dayton, there that.

Speaker 6 (04:08):
Does it looks enough like an engine to be one.

Speaker 5 (04:11):
All we need is a magneto.

Speaker 4 (04:14):
You found your magneto.

Speaker 5 (04:16):
You can hardly wait. Then it's working.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Horrible, I tell you, this thing's working. We've got our engine.

Speaker 5 (04:27):
The rest was easy.

Speaker 4 (04:28):
You built your plane, shifted here to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina,
the constant wind here, the broad expanse of land, ideal
for your purpose. The other day wilbrid tested the plane.
No luck, it didn't leave the ground. Just some damage.
Now you Orville Tomorrow it's your turn to try. Only
you can't sleep. A shadow at the back of your mind,

(04:51):
a fleeting sense of fear. Suppose something happens to me tomorrow?

Speaker 1 (04:58):
What if I crash?

Speaker 6 (05:00):
What a.

Speaker 5 (05:02):
What about?

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Will He'll go on?

Speaker 7 (05:05):
Of course from where we left off?

Speaker 4 (05:08):
She must, But Willie, would I go on if anything
happened to him?

Speaker 5 (05:18):
Just not sleepy? Not as well? Get up, Put a
few clothes.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
On, wrap blanket about you, open the door, careful not
to wake blueber lonely desolate sands, icy cold, dark woodlands
to one side of the dunes, ocean on the other.
And you stand there, a few stars, tiny lights of

(05:43):
a boat far out to see the lifeboat station a
mile away. A few steps from you, A shed that
houses your precious flying machine.

Speaker 7 (05:53):
Might as well take a look at him.

Speaker 5 (05:56):
Make sure it's all right there.

Speaker 4 (05:59):
It is inside the shed like a giant box kite
with a motor wings forty.

Speaker 5 (06:10):
Feet to tip. D Vincere dreamed of something like this.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yes, and Henson Wenham Maxim over in England. They know
we yard in France Langley over here they experimented.

Speaker 5 (06:26):
You know why they failed? Horrible? Their theories were all wrong.

Speaker 4 (06:30):
You and Wilburt proved that they knew little or nothing
about air pressure. You and Wilburt devoted years to that.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Study or better ways of catching pneumonia.

Speaker 5 (06:41):
Oh, I just came out here to a wind. I
had a mind to look at that rudder that we damns.

Speaker 6 (06:47):
All right, feels like Christmas out here. They will be
home by then.

Speaker 4 (06:54):
Night passing. You're asleep. Now, you're right, but you're not relaxed.
Waiting tomorrow morning is the unknown future?

Speaker 5 (07:07):
Awful? Wake up? Oh, breakfast in ten minutes? How's the
win too high for any tests? Where's it from? No?
Over thirty miles an hour? Well, it's early yet. We'll
put a clean shirt on today, clean color to Will?

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Why you were relevant enough for both of us?

Speaker 5 (07:23):
I'd like to be comfortable. Well, there are people coming over.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Do you have to wear that mob eatn cap?

Speaker 5 (07:29):
How about wearing a decent hat for once?

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Huh?

Speaker 4 (07:34):
Well, let win the slackened. Might as well roll the
flying machine out. You've invited all the local people to
watch the test. Only a few have come, but enough
so that they can witness the trial flight. Mister Daniels
will take a photograph when the plane leaves the ground.

Speaker 5 (07:50):
Well, let's start.

Speaker 7 (07:51):
The motor will warm.

Speaker 5 (07:53):
Her up a bit, right, make sure the rudders are
all okay.

Speaker 6 (07:56):
Huh, that's fine.

Speaker 5 (08:05):
Check the wind we're in.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
I'll look at the rudders all.

Speaker 4 (08:10):
You're about ready to test your flying machine in order
to write no flan pair, no crowd, no excitement, last
night's fears all forgotten. Careful as you climb up into
the plane. The plane is supported by skidders. The skidds
will carry the machine over rails until the moment it
takes off.

Speaker 5 (08:28):
If it takes off horsehead or.

Speaker 7 (08:31):
Off, that good.

Speaker 4 (08:33):
Luckily cast off the rope moving now. Wilbur running beside
the machine, holding one of the wings to keep the
plane on the rails.

Speaker 5 (08:46):
Whilse's building to one side holder. I can't the wind's
too strong. Wind too strong.

Speaker 6 (08:53):
Don't try to take off.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Too late, Yes, too late, gaining speed?

Speaker 4 (08:57):
Now the plane lurches.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
Winds pairs and a rudder.

Speaker 7 (09:00):
Marble, not a murder.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Don't try to take off, you'll be killed.

Speaker 7 (09:05):
He's leaving the ground.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
This is their porter.

Speaker 4 (09:15):
It's never been done before. You were the first man
to fly a machine. Rising now two feet from the ground.
Three the machine wabbles a bit, careful, keep the winds balanced,
rising still rather still giving trouble.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Five feet six.

Speaker 4 (09:36):
Still rising wind treacherous you or Bill right, You'll have
been battling the wind for years. Steady, it's still rising
nine feet from the ground.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Ten gol, he's coming out?

Speaker 7 (10:03):
Orrible?

Speaker 5 (10:04):
You all right? Yes, what happened? I don't know how
long was I off the ground?

Speaker 6 (10:09):
Twelve second?

Speaker 5 (10:11):
Orble?

Speaker 2 (10:12):
What the machine fly?

Speaker 5 (10:15):
Let's make repairs?

Speaker 4 (10:17):
You try her another flight, a third, a fourth. Nothing
much to do now except creak the machine for shipment
back to dating.

Speaker 5 (10:30):
The job's done.

Speaker 4 (10:34):
The newspapers ignore your flying machine, but you will go
on to further experiments.

Speaker 5 (10:43):
Just now, orbell and will be right.

Speaker 4 (10:46):
You'll sit there in your sister's living room, waiting for Christmas.
Dinner and for the rest of the family to arrive.
You sit there chatting idly.

Speaker 6 (10:57):
Will do you.

Speaker 5 (10:58):
Think there's any practical use for our plane?

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Oh, it might be used for exploring.

Speaker 7 (11:06):
Yeah, there are carrying mail to out of weigh places.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (11:12):
You can't know or feel right that in a few
years your brother will be dead and you will go
on into history alone. You can't know that within fifty
years of this month, when you few the first airplane
at Kitty Hawk, giant planes carrying fifty passengers and more
will fly the oceans. In your lifetime, there'll be two

(11:36):
major world wars. You'll live to see thousands of mighty
bombers streaming from America across the Pacific and Atlantic to
defend civilization itself. You'll see jet planes travel faster than
sound in the day when the eyes of the world
turned skyward, when survival of your country and its allies
may depend largely on air power. These things you can't

(11:57):
possibly know, or you'll right as you say there in
your sister's home on Christmas Day nineteen hundred and three,
But vaguely you do know you've launched the world into
a new era. Well, I've got an idea that if
a country had a few of our planes, no one
would care about attacking it.

Speaker 6 (12:16):
Yeah, I think you're right. Or maybe our planes could
even put.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
A stop to war.

Speaker 5 (12:21):
Yeah, bring about peace.

Speaker 6 (12:29):
Now Here is Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle, Chairman of
the National Committee to observe the fiftieth anniversary of Powered Fight.

Speaker 7 (12:38):
As we look at it today, that flight of the
Wright Brothers made at Kitty Hawk ushered in what has
proved to be the most momentous fifty year period in
modern history. During no other half century such vast change
has taken place in the world. The aeroplane has been
a great boon to mankind and drawing all the people
of the world closer together.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
And leading to better understanding.

Speaker 7 (13:01):
Unfortunately, it has also become an unparalleled medium of destruction.
But we must never allow the specter of modern warfare
to cloud our vision of the future. The airplane has
brought knowledge where it did not exist before. It performs
stirring missions of mercy. We must exploit to the utmost
the advantages which this great social tool provides. I am

(13:26):
glad to be Chairman of the Committee for the Celebration
of the fiftieth anniversary of powered flight. It is our
purpose to further equate the American people with the great
opportunities which aviation offers our nation. I am gratified that
the Ladies Auxiliary to the Veterans of Foreign Wars has
helped in this job by devoting a program in their
American Trail series to the story of the Wright Brothers

(13:49):
and the beginning of the air Age.

Speaker 6 (13:55):
All thanks to General too Little, this has been the
twelfth chapter in the Story of the American Nation, brought
to you by the Ladies Auxiliary to the Veterans of
Foreign Wars.
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