We call the two decades before World War 2 the Golden Years of Aviation. This is a fitting sobriquet. The years following Lindy's 1927 Flight to Paris abounded with fabulous aviation personalities and exciting aircraft. The former included Turner, Doolittle, Al Williams, Howard, Wittman and many others. The aircraft were designs such as the great Schneider Cup racers in the late '20s produced by Curtiss, Gloster, Supermarine, and Macchi-Castoldi. The National Air Races and Thompson Trophy Races produced Gee Bees, Howards, Lairds, Wedell-Williams and other racing aircraft of wide acclaim. Hollywood rose to the occasion and produced many movies about WW-1 air battles and the Racing Machines. There were plots using aero engineers and early air_ transport in the mountainous areas of the world. Some of these movies were good, others . . .? Radio had its Jimmie Mattern and Jimmy Allen. Even the other non-aviation heroes knew HOW to fly! This exposure to aviation in the pulps and "glossy"magazines, movies, radio, newspapers, and adventure strips in the comics contributed to the creation of another Golden Age. We remember Zack Mosley's "Smilin' Jack", and Caniff's "Terry and the Pirates" and "Steve Canyon". This resulted in the creation of the Golden Age of Model Aviation.

The national heroes are too many to mention in this brief account of Model Aviation. It would be a shame to omit any of those names we read about in those great magazines of the period. We studied the design details of their models in FLYING ACES, MODEL AIRPLANE NEWS and AIR TRAILS. Some of these Model Greats are still with us; some are not. We still recall their exploits and models we read about so long ago. Perhaps they shall always be with us in the Archives and Museum of The Academy of Model Aeronautics.

I can remember many "moments" in those years that seemed to end with the start of 1942. The War sharply curtailed model aviation "for the Duration", as we called the period until the end of WW-2. The sound of the guns in Europe ended the "Golden Years" of both Aviation and Model Aviation. "Moments" are not only the recollection of tiny bits of time, but also include sights and sounds and feels and smells. Remember the smell of a Halloween mask when you slipped it over your face? How about the slightly suffocating feeling diffused with excitement as you looked at your image in a mirror? Another moment. . . . How about those silk-covered and wire-framed model airplanes made in Japan? Closing my eyes, I am back there. . . . As I wind the rubber loop, I can feel the vibration as the turns climb up the propeller hook and fall off.

Holding the model close to my nose I catch the faint smell of rubber and metal and varnished silk. There is no way to stretch the rubber while winding, even if I had known to do so. When I get a "double row" of knots I'll launch it. Here goes! See it go! It rises to the height of the telephone poles with a soft whirring of the propeller. As the wing strikes a wire my stomach flutters in sympathy as the model, wound down, stalls and spins to the ground. As it strikes, my knotted stomach seems to want to up-swallow the Ovaltine and peanut butter sandwich my mother gave me a half hour ago! I can feel the peanut butter sticking to the roof of my mouth. The other kids get there first and I yell "Don't touch it!" to the little girl picking it up. As I gently remove it from her fingers I see a rib solder joint has given way at the leading edge. It's not bad. I can fix it with liquid solder. I wish I had the larger model, like Billy's in the next block. I think the big one is stronger. There are other similar moments remembered by those who were the youngsters of those days. Many of those kids looked down at a line of trucks on the Burma Road. Perhaps they approached the deck of a carrier in the Mariannas. How many looked over their shoulder at the red spinner of an He.190 over Italy or North Africa . . . or was it Germany? Will we ever know the true contribution of the Golden Years of Model Aviation to that time we called "the duration"? If our nation requests a future manpower contribution of a like nature - is it there?

( This piece was found adrift on the net and I have no idea who wrote it. Charlie )

"Be who your are and say what you feel,
    because those who mind don't matter
      and those who matter don't mind."
                        Dr. Seuss