The Winged Gospel: America's Romance with Aviation, 1900-1950

The Winged Gospel reconstructs America's first era of manned flight and brings back to life the famous and lesser-known aviators who became the nation's heroes: Charles Lindbergh, whose achievement was a great event of the 20s... Amelia Eahrhardt, one of the many women aces... Calbraith Rogers, who made the first transcontinental flight, surviving a dozen crashes, a broken arm and collarbone, and a score of wounds caused by the metal fragments of an exploded engine... And many others. The book provides a vivid picture of America in the first half of the century-its aspirations and concerns-as expressed in the exuberant and often utopian response to a major new technology.

I have been infatuated with airplanes ever since I first laid eyes on one when I was about six years old. Love came later when I got a bit older. I first flew when Dad, who was with the Ford Motor Company, was sent to Paris after WWII. In 1949 my mother, brother and I flew on a TWA Lockheed Constellation, the "Star of Indiana" from Detroit to join him in Paris. All the relatives and friends came out to see us off. It was an event! That is the way flying was in those days. There was a romance about it. Winging one's way across vast expanses of land and water to a destination far away in the comfort of a speeding airliner was an adventure in itself. Our return from Europe was aboard the Ile de France sailing from Le Havre to New York. It was a rough winter crossing; not as much fun as the flight over. From New York to Detroit we again took to the air, this time aboard an American Airlines DC-3. Right after takeoff the right engine started backfiring and otherwise misbehaving. The pilots made a quick return to LaGuardia. It was old hat for them I am sure, but exciting for us. Another airplane was brought out and off we went bound for home. Flight had captured my imagination and imbued in my psyche an unrelenting quest for fulfillment. I was hooked! In reading The Winged Gospel, I find that so have been many others have been as well. Joseph J. Corn's book, The Winged Gospel, takes a unique look at the history of manned flight. For centuries heavier than air flight was an impossibility Then on December 17, 1903 the Wright brothers succeeded. Despite their achievement they chose not to immediately publicize their accomplishment. Thus, when people finally became aware that man had successfully flown, they didn't believe it. Too many others had failed in the quest. People had to see it for themselves. Not until the brothers embarked on the aviation circuit did large numbers of people witness the miracle of man departing the earth into the realm of the birds and, as some thought, the heavens. Seeing is believing and thousands came to believe in the miracle. The possibility of leaving mother earth and experiencing the freedom of flight infused people with a new sense of "airmindedness". Much was expected from airplanes and aviators. Aviation was the future. It seemed to offer so much. Could it even be mankind's salvation?. "Aviation enthusiasts tended to view flight as a `holy cause,' one requiring not only total devotion but also dedicated prosyletizing [sic] or evangelizing." (52) This religious overtone, the "Winged Gospel" and the "romance with aviation," according to Joseph Corn lasted for the first half of the century of flight. It is this early love affair, the airmindedness, that Corn describes. The tone of his text is light hearted and the religious overtones are not meant to be taken totally seriously. Yet it is a serious study and should be accepted as such. By 1950 however the harsh reality of the airplane's usage in war had burst the

This is a classic study of the social history of the airplane and why Americans have been so attracted to its use. First published in 1983, it is now available in this 2002 edition with a new preface. I first read "The Winged Gospel" soon after its publication and found it a path-breaking, provocative study that emphasized beliefs about the airplane held by the machine's early advocates. I recently reread it and was impressed once again by its insight and the reasonableness of its thesis. Stanford University historian Joseph J. Corn saw "air mindedness" in the first part of the twentieth century as something akin to a secular religion. It had articles of faith, creeds, acolytes, ceremonies, and sacred relics and spaces. The ability to fly represented the opportunity to transcend the earthly realm and reach a "higher plain," something that many viewed as both romantic and religious experiences. Like all religions, secular or not, Corn concluded that airplane advocates based their ideas more on faith than on evidence. At a fundamental level "The Winged Gospel" explores the affect of imagination on the development of American aviation, but it is much more. Almost immediately after the Wright brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903, Americans came to view the airplane as what Corn has characterized as a romance that espoused beliefs anticipating the social effects of aviation upon the lives of ordinary people. For example, as Corn demonstrates, early advocates of the airplane predicted that virtually all of society's ills--war, poverty, pestilence, inequality, and ignorance--could be eradicated through the employment of that technology. This "air mindedness" served as a way to improve human life while encouraging the general development of aviation in the United States. Films, books, articles, and radio broadcasts celebrated the exploits of pilots as reformers and individual heroes aligned against bureaucracy, militarism, and private greed. Aviation advocates painted a vision of the future in which millions of people would fly through the air and be liberated by the experience. Accordingly, the airplane during the first decade of the twentieth century began to be touted as the great promise for the nation. Its advocates emphasized the wonders of a machine that allowed men to fly like birds. Some advocates said it would make war impossible, because of its ability to strike at the interior of an enemy nation and destroy its manufacturing capability. Others predicted the linking of the world together in a great net of nearly instantaneous transportation routes. A few even argued that airplanes could improve people's health and refine their aesthetic sensibilities. Collectively, this "winged gospel" changed the world, even if it did not deliver all of the promises its early advocates hoped. Corn ends his study in 1950, but it would have been interesting to trace the vestiges of the romance of aviation to the present. It is still present at some le

Joseph Corn's "The Winged Gospel" is a loving study of why many Americans were fascinated with aviation during the first half of the twentieth century. Corn explores the religous flavor which became associated with the airplane, and how a career in aviation became regarded as a mystical, "higher calling." Corn also examines how the bombing raids of World War II, especially on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, shattered that optimism. Corn devotes separate chapters to such phenomenon as the unique freedoms discovered by women aviators, the belief of "an airplane in every garage," and the boundless optimism in the future brought about by the airplane held by people in the grip of a crippling depression. Although his prose tends to be a little dry at times, Corn manages to coherently present a time when people embraced technology, and placed all of their hopes in its "miracles." As Corn ably proves, that time is something Americans will probably never see again.