Shipboard Fighters 69 Battleship of the Air 70 Naval Aviation Gets Ready 72 The U. S. Navy’s First Long-Range Flying Boats 74 Technical Progress in the U. S. Army Air Corps in the Thirties 76 Army Attack Aviation and Training 80 Superfighter 82 Man-Made _Thunderbolts_ Rip Wide a Path to Victory 84 Superfortress 86 Naval Aviation in the Early Months of World War II 88 The U. S. Navy’s Deadliest Fighter Plane 90 Dive-Bomber 93 Our Flying Navy 94 Aërial Armada 96 Postwar Aviation 100 Index of Persons 103 [Illustration] THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN AVIATION [Illustration: THE FLIGHT OF ETANA] THE DREAMERS The idea of human flight has excited man’s imagination for thousands of years. From stories and legends handed down through the years, we know that even from earliest times people dreamed of flying. There are visions of conquering the air in the colorful legends of winged men and beasts found in ancient folklore. The winged statuary of the Egyptians was no doubt inspired by the desire to imitate the flight of birds. In Greek mythology Hermes, the messenger of the gods, is clothed with winged sandals and helmet. Historians have unearthed stories in cuneiform writing of man’s attempts to fly. Some of these inscriptions date back more than five thousand years, to 3500 B.C. Perhaps the most famous of these stories is the ancient Babylonian tale of the shepherd boy, Etana, who rode on the back of an eagle.