Aviation Scrapbook, 1917 - 1935

The scrapbook contains primarily newspaper clippings concerning the various long-distance flights of the 1920s. The main focus of the scrapbook is the first aerial circumnavigation of the world in 1924 by four aviators in the U.S. Army Air Service: Lowell H. Smith, Erik H. Nelson, John Harding, Jr., and Henry H. Ogden. The scrapbook does not contain any original photographs and very few types of documents besides newspaper clippings. Clippings are mostly from the Philadelphia Record, Chicago Tribune, Beloit (Wisconsin) Daily News, St. Louis Globe Democrat, Philadelphia Ledger, and New York Times.

Additional topics covered in the collection include: the Columbia, a Bellanca Monoplane which made the first flight from the U.S. to Germany (pilot Clarence D. Chamberlin and financial backer Charles A. Levine); the deaths of Will Rogers and Wiley Post on takeoff in Alaska on 1935 August 15; the first flight from California to Hawaii; the 1928 flight from Australia to Fiji; Major F. L. Martin’s disappearance and the finding of Major F. L. Martin; McCook Field, Dayton; zeppelins, blimps, and airships, including the Graf Zeppelin; Captain Charles A. Lindbergh’s flight from New York to Paris on 1927 May; and Italo Balbo and his Italian Air Armada.