History is Written by the Poets

Have you ever had a flying dream?
With wings?
With a balloon?
With nothing but your mind?
What holds you back?
Lack of Poetry.








"The first military use of aircraft in Europe took place during the French Revolutionary Wars, when the French used a tethered hydrogen balloon to observe the movements of the Austrian army during the Battle of Fleurus (1794)."



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_C._Gray

"Hawthorne Charles Gray (February 16, 1889 – November 4, 1927) was a captain in the United States Army Air Corps.

 On November 4, 1927, he succeeded in setting a new altitude record in a silk, rubberized, and aluminum-coated balloon launched from Scott Field near Belleville, Illinois, reaching 42,470 ft (12.94 km), but died during his descent after his oxygen supply became depleted.

 The record was recognized by the National Aeronautical Association, but not by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale because the dead aeronaut "was not in personal possession of his instruments."

Gray was born on February 16, 1889 in Pasco, Washington.

 He was the son of William Polk Gray (1845-1929), a prominent steamboat captain in the Northwestern United States, and Oceana Falkland Bush.
_________

***( 210 W 4th Street, my old home in the Dalles Oregon. the Captain Gray House, built by Hawthorne C. Gray's father.)----flb bloggod.

___________


 "Hawthorne Gray was a graduate of the University of Idaho.

Gray served as an officer in the Idaho National Guard and enlisted in the United States Army in 1915, serving as an infantry private in the Pancho Villa Expedition of 1916.

 Gray was commissioned a second lieutenant on June 2, 1917, and transferred with the rank of captain to what was then the United States Army Air Service in 1920.

 He began piloting balloons in 1921.

 He placed third in the 1926 National Balloon Race and second in the 1926 Gordon Bennett balloon race."





"