Archie League soared through the skies, skimming cow barns co-piloted by danger.
The young aerial daredevil gained a bird’s-eye view on the need for safety.
A Missouri native, League was hired to direct aircraft at Lambert Field in St. Louis in 1929. This incubator of dauntless pilots and air safety seers grew into Lambert-St. Louis International Airport.
The barnstormer forged a league of his own in aviation history.
Archie League is the nation's first air-traffic controller — and became an essential figure in American and global air safety for nearly half a century.
"Through one man’s eyes we can see all of aviation history almost to the present," St. Louis author and historian Jeannette Cooperman told Fox News Digital.
"By the time he left the industry, we had been through air wars and the atomic age and very sophisticated advances in radar. League saw it all."
He interrupted his career in aviation to serve as a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II.
He returned to civilian life and became a key executive in what’s now the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
After saving a single pilot on a stormy night in St. Louis, League helped pioneer methods, mechanics and logistics that make air travel today the world’s safest mode of transportation.
Millions of Americans, along with many more around the world, fly every day above the vast safety net that League first stitched together with flags and a folding chair in the American Heartland.
Archie William League was born on Aug. 19, 1907, in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, to Archie L. and Itaska Snow (Magner) League.
Like many boys his age, League was gripped by the thrill of flight.
He was only a teen in the 1920s when he took to the air with the daredevil craze of the day: barnstorming dangerously over rural and small-town America, thrilling earth-bound dreamers below.
"Spinning, diving, and doing loop-the-loops above the clouds, engine roaring, little plane shaking," Cooperman wrote last year in The Common Reader, published by Washington University in St. Louis.
MEET THE AMERICAN WHO TAUGHT THE TUSKEGEE AIRMEN TO FLY: PIONEER PILOT CHARLES ‘CHIEF’ ANDERSON
"He and the other barnstormers in his flying circus entertained folks across Missouri and Illinois."
St. Louis emerged as the center of global aviation in the late 1920s after another essential figure in the history of air travel flew past over a barrier in a feat that still grips the imagination.
Charles Lindbergh, a Lambert Field mail pilot, flew non-stop solo across the Atlantic Ocean on May 21, 1927. His effort and his aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis, were funded by some of the city’s leading businessmen.
"Lindbergh became a world hero who would remain in the public eye for decades," the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum reports on its website.
"His flight touched off the ‘Lindbergh boom’ in aviation — aircraft industry stocks rose in value, and interest in flying skyrocketed."
Lindbergh instantly made the world smaller. And he made his home airfield busier. Too busy for the times.
Pilots gripped by aviation fever took off, flew and landed amid growing danger over the heartland air hub of St. Louis.
The City of St. Louis hired Archie League to solve the emerging problem of crowded runways at Lambert Field.
"His communication tools were simple: a red flag for ‘hold’ and a checkered one for ‘go,’" the FAA reports in its history of air traffic control.
"His other equipment included a folding chair, drinking water and a pad for taking notes."
League was actually something of a new kind of traffic cop — "the first person on the ground to direct planes so they would not collide," notes NASA in a timeline of landmark moments in air-traffic control.
Growing danger grew out of the clouds, too.
MEET THE AMERICAN WHO SERVED AS THE MODEL FOR HUCK FINN, 'KINDLY YOUNG HEATHEN' TOM BLANKENSHIP
"In October 1929, a small biplane faced severe weather conditions, including dense fog, as it approached [Lambert] airfield in St. Louis," reports the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).
"As the aircraft neared the field, League transmitted a series of calm and concise instructions to guide the pilot to a safe landing."
It was, the organization claims, the first-known instance of an aircraft guided to safety by a specialist on the ground.
The moment, NATCA notes, "laid the foundation for the role of air traffic controllers as unsung heroes of the skies."
The air-traffic control industry took flight side by side with air travel.
League earned a degree in aeronautical engineering from Washington University in 1937, then joined the Federal Bureau of Air Commerce. It has since evolved into the Federal Aviation Administration.
Col. Archie League served as a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces battling Japan in the Pacific in World War II, before returning to lead the industry.
He eventually became the FAA’s director of air traffic controllers in 1965, with responsibility for air-traffic control and safety across the entire nation.
League retired in 1973.
The miracle of modern transportation delivers millions of people to all corners of the earth safely every single day today.
Archie William League died on Oct. 1, 1986 in Annandale, Virginia.
He was 79 years old.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER
League’s name, says NATCA, is "reverently whispered through the annals of aviation history."
The greatest testament to his contributions to the modern world is found in the safety record of air travel.
Delays, in-flight passenger dust-ups and the rare tragic disaster generate headlines.
Yet there were only six fatal accidents worldwide in all of 2023, according to industry resource FlightGlobal.com.
League's name is synonymous with safety among people in the aviation industry. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association honors its top members each year with the Archie League Medals of Safety.
The legacy of the global industry "began with the brave actions of a single air traffic controller guiding a struggling aircraft to safety," NATCA notes.
"The story of Archie League and the genesis of federal air traffic control serves as a testament to the power of human ingenuity and collaboration in shaping the course of aviation history."
To read more stories in this unique "Meet the American Who…" series from Fox News Digital, click here.
For more Lifestyle articles, visit www.foxnews.com/lifestyle.
from Latest Lifestyle News on Fox News https://ift.tt/MWePfL1
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire