New book details history of flight, as seen at Smithsonian's Air
 and Space Museum
     WASHINGTON -- November 20, 1997 1:35 p.m. EST (1835 GMT) -- The
 Wright Brothers were thrilled at their first brief airplane flight
 in 1903 and couldn't wait to share the news with their friends back
 home in Dayton, Ohio.
     Unfortunately, the newspaper editor who received word of the
 flight from North Carolina didn't share their enthusiasm.
     "Fifty-seven seconds, heh?" the editor smirked. "If it had been
 57 minutes, then it might have been a news item."
     That tale, and many more, are told in a new history of flight
 that is based on the collection of the Smithsonian's National Air
 and Space Museum.
     "I wanted to create a link between the experience of going to
 the museum and seeing those wonderful artifacts and the history
 that they represent," said Andrew Chaikin, a Massachusetts writer
 who used to work for the museum.
                    Separating myth from fact
       The book, "Air and Space: The National Air and Space Museum
 Story of Flight," begins, as did powered flight itself, "on a cold
 December morning in 1903, on a forlorn North Carolina shore."
     Somehow, Chaikin observes, a myth persists that Wilbur and Or-
 ville Wright "were just a couple of bicycle mechanics who tinkered
 together a flying machine in their back room."
     Rather, he reports, they possessed an inventive genius that set
 them apart from their rivals.
     Before the Wrights, others tried to fly and failed, sometimes
 spectacularly. But the brothers realized a successful machine must
 combine essential elements: a structure to produce lift, some method
 of propulsion and a means to control flight.
     How they met those challenges, and why others didn't, is ex-
 plained in the volume, using illustrations and photos from the
 museum.
                    Suspension of disbelief
     Getting people to believe their claims was a problem for the
 laconic brothers. This was especially true in France, where many
 thought they had witnessed the first flight -- Alberto Santos
 Dumont's 1906 takeoff in a barely controllable craft resembling a
 collection of box kites with a propeller.
     Finally, in 1908, Wilbur Wright crossed the Atlantic -- by
 boat -- with one of his planes onboard and made them believers.
     "On August 8 their doubts were resolved," Chaikin reports. When
 Wright took to the skies "the assembled onlookers were reduced to
 awe. ... Wilbur flew precisely and masterfully, making a series of
 tight, steeply banked turns, the likes of which the French had never
 seen.
      Now there could be no question that the Wrights had done every-
 thing they claimed."
      The author calls the Wright Brothers "true aeronautical engi-
 neers. They essentially invented the field."
                      Marvelous flying machines
       The book documents the hopeful years of early flight that fol-
 lowed the Wrights. Later, planes were used in warfare, first as ob-
 servers and then as fighters with pilots carrying pistols to shoot
 at one another.
    Early fighter aces appear in the pages -- Eddie Rickenbacker and
 Osward Boelcke, Rene Fonck and Mike Mannock and, of course, the Red
 Baron, Manfred von Richthofen.
     Between the wars, aviation went through an adolescence some call
 its Golden Era with racing and record flights.
     Zeppelins plied the skies, Charles Lindbergh battled rain, ice
 and sleep for 33 hours to be the first to fly across the Atlantic
 solo, while colorful pioneers like Howard Hughes, Wiley Post and
 Amelia Earhardt attracted attention.
                             Top guns
     Chaikin takes readers through World War II, when war moved from
 the colorful knights of the sky to the complex and technical; it
 brought computer bombsights, long-range navigation, the first jet
 fighters and even rockets.
     Illustrating the two faces of war in the volume are a pair of
 images of the famed B-17 Flying Fortress bombers.
     One page contains a beautiful painting of B-17s flying in for-
 mation above the clouds -- only a few puffs of antiaircraft smoke
 and a distant German fighter hint at reality.
     To the right, reality is all there is; a photo of a B-17 shows
 the craft's waist ripped apart by an antiaircraft shell, killing two
 gunners and crippling the plane.
     The chapter on World War II concludes, as did the conflict, with
 the dropping of the atomic bombs. Readers can see the cockpit of the
 Enola Gay, the B-29 that carried the first bomb and, as Chaikin ob-
 serves, "ushered in an era of total warfare far more terrible than
 anything previously known."
                    The future and beyond
     Finally, the volume arrives at the space age, the triumph of
 landing on the moon and the tragedy of the 1986 Challenger space
 shuttle disaster both warmly detailed.
     And it concludes with a look at experimental work under way and
 the possibilities to come, returning to quote Orville Wright, who
 was once asked what aviation held for the future.
     "I cannot answer," Wright said, "except to assure you that it
 will be spectacular."
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