The advent of the airplane industry expanded the scope and pace of the American economy, creating thousands of new jobs while providing rapid access to distant markets. It also gave the U.S. military air its superiority, contributing directly to America's emergence as a "super power" during the world wars.

The aircraft industry also helped diversify the American workforce. When millions of men shipped off to war in the 1940s, thousands of blacks and women took jobs in the manufacture of airplanes-positions previously denied them due to race and gender. These factors, combined with the advent of jet propulsion and other new technologies, assured that the American economy, its military, and its workforce would never return to a pre-war status.

These materials, which include photos, oral histories, and government documents, illustrate the airplane industry's effect on America's workforce. Using these materials, CONSIDER:

• How did early competition between the Wright Brothers and Glenn H. Curtis affect the early development of the airplane industry?
• In what ways did the airplane industry contribute to the desegregation of America's workforce?
• What effect did the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have on the airplane industry?

1. View: Subcontracting aircraft parts. Many strange-looking tools are required to get into the difficult places where rivets must be placed in the modern military airplane. Workers are working on an airplane sub-assembly part in an Ohio plant. Goodyear, Akron, Ohio.
2. View: Woman working on airplane engine during World War II.
3. View: Emily Rabbat making parts for airplane engines on a horizontal milling machine.
4. View: Frances Eggleston, aged 23, came from Oklahoma, used to do office work.
5. View: Woman working on an airplane motor at North American Aviation, Inc., plant in Calif.
6. View: WAVES help keep the Navy's planes flying.
7. View: Women in war. Supercharger plant workers. These women war workers at a Midwest supercharger plant are buffing small delicate airplane engine parts. Note protective head coverings and comfortable slack suits. Allis Chalmers Manufacture Company.
8. View: Victory Corps, tomorrow's defenders of liberty. Experienced workers train young girls in the high school Victory Corps to become valuable members of the vast womanpower army. Sally Brown, who is learning to rivet airplane parts at Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles, California, will be ready for skilled work in the war industry when her course in riveting is completed.
9. View: Manpower. Handicapped workers. With both arms and legs crippled by infantile paralysis, pretty Mary Elizabeth Conway, twenty-one, does a war job for Uncle Sam, and loves it. She's painting Y's for airplane engines at the Maryland League for Crippled Children, working on a contract to a Baltimore engineering company. White Engineering Company, Baltimore, Maryland.
10. View: Flying officers, Love Field, Dallas, Tex.
11. View: Huge air liners connect Clovis, New Mexico, with east and west coasts.
12. View: Douglas DST airplane, with American Airlines logo, on field.
13. View: Serving dinner aboard American airliner from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles.
14. View: Members of the New York City Ballet Company pose for the photographer at La Guardia airport before boarding an American Airlines flite [sic] to Chicago.
15. View: Aboard United airliner enroute from San Francisco to New York.
16. View: Airplane mechanics course.
17. View: Workers on the Liberator Bombers, Consolidated Aircraft Corp., [Fort Worth, Texas].
18. View: Postmaster General Work and his assistants inspecting the Radio equipment recently installed on aero mail planes.
19. View: The more women at work the sooner we win!
20. View: Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co., Bristol [fighter] assembly.
21. View: Seated in the rear cockpit, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander in Chief of A.F.H.Q., readies himself for the take off to fly back from the front lines. Piloting the plane is Maj. T.J. Walker, Fifth Army Artillery office, Venafro sector, Italy / U.S. Army photograph.
22. View: Business planes help companies provide service and jobs : general aviation private planes do a world of things you never hear.
23. View: Capt. Roy N. Francis standing next to Martin twinmotored, 800-horsepower transcontinental airplane.
24. View: Fresh milk flown to isolated sectors of Berlin / U.S. Air Force photo., Wash. D.C.
25. View: Night milk run to Berlin.
26. View: C-82. Newest transport shown at demonstration of equipment held by United States Army Air Forces..
27. View: Tuskegee, Ala. Mar. 1942. Members of the first class of Negro pilots in the history of the US Army Air Corps who were graduated at the advanced flying school as second lieutenants by Major General George E. Stratemeyer.
28. View: American Airlines--Alta Park City Sundance--Salt Lake City.
29. View: Passengers boarding a Trans World Airline Constellation.
30. View: Amelia Earhart, seated in airplane, checking equipment.
31. View: Charles A. Lindbergh.
32. View: Women fabricating the inboard section of a wing, one of the final assembly operations at the War Production Division of the H.J. Heinz Company, Pittsburgh.
33. View: Production. Airplane manufacture, general. Sorting rivets may seem a lowly task in the making of war planes...
34. View: The Geneva conventions : release and repatriation of prisoners of war.
35. View: Aerial view of Pan American Airways "China Clipper" over San Francisco - Coit Memorial Tower at left.
36. View: Hawaii by flying clipper--Pan American Airways System.
37. View:  Wright brothers.

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1. Read: Deposition by J. A. D. McCurdy, April 9, 1920
2. Read: Flying in Alaska
3. Read: Minutes by Thomas E. Selfridge, October 1, 1907
4. Read: AN AIR-MINDED FAMILY

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Lindbergh flew with a Paterson-built motor Text of Document: Interview with Angelo Basileo at his home in Haledon, New Jersey. Summary of audio segment: Angelo was working at Wright's where they made the engine for the plane that Lindbergh flew over the Atlantic. He was working the day they announced that he had landed in France. They gave us the day off. It was a great day for Paterson. Now Lindbergh didn't live in Paterson, but he made the flight with a Paterson-built motor.
"The man hired me that same day and that was it." NOTES Interview with George and Martha Jiggetts, owners, Jiggetts Transportation. Summary of audio segment: George went to a cousin in Newark first, but "he was doing worse than I was." Martha had a cousin in Paterson; George went to Paterson and went to Wright's factory that made the airplanes. Came here on Labor Day, 1942 and got that job right away.

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