do not allow yourself to be captured. you're a dead man if you do. and it didn't take very long before they found out otherwise. and there was a hemorrhaging of desertion of the british forces, particularly german troops. some entire units came over. an entire company with, you know, noncommissioned officer and all the men would come over together once in a while. so there was a lot of desertion. as we got closer to the surrender. [applause] dean snow: everybody should have one of these cards so you can go online and see these maps, because otherwise you won't find it. >> is there any books for autographing? think i have front.

[background chatter] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer 1: you are watching "american history tv," all weekend every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at these ministry. -- at c-span history. each weekend, american artifacts takes you to his youngest to learn about american history. located in virginia beach, virginia, the aviation museum is one of the largest collection of artifacts from world war i and world war ii. aviationhrough the hangar to learn about pilot training during the war. this is the first of a two-part

series. robert powell: welcome to the virginia beach aviation museum. i am boom powell. i will explain a few things we have. these he has has a complete -- the museum has a complete 60lection, and it is about airplanes here. we have restorations coming and going and others he maintained as time goes on. i am standing in front of one of the oldest airplanes here at the museum. this is a 1911 wright brothers flyer, the right model b. it is not the same as the kitty hawk airplane. there is an act elevator. the engine is offset. there is a chain drive changing to general -- changing to propellers. the wright brothers were geniuses with coming up with the

secret to flight was not be able to be stable and not do anything but to be able to maneuver and have a little bit of an stability in the airplane. they came up with many developments that are now standard. with the pitch of the airplane, the elevator moved up and down. they did develop a runner which -- rudder. you have to roll the airplane to turn it. their solution was simple, take a box structure and twisted. this called when working. you can -- winning the war -- wingwarp. tank up oned fuel top, very early stages. in a few minutes, we will go up to the other hangar where we have a curtiss pusher built the same year as this airplane was. you will see the big differences especially when we talk about

the ailerangs. the right brothers -- wright brothers were very exact. they were involved with the patent against curtis for his invention, claiming it infringed on their patent. the rights had taken the airplane over to europe in 1908, demonstrated it there, and europeans who had flown before were amazed. war, as world war i began , the startup of the thing, the theirooked upon it as development, very quiet to what had been going on in europe recently. the wright brothers flight -- fight in the courts. the u.s. government bought the right patent for the flying machine for one dollar, and after that, the patent flight for wing warping went away.

and then it began from there on in. , it wasticular airplane a tight like this. this is a replica. they could fly coast-to-coast. there was a big contest with a lot money involved for the first airplane to make it in 30 days or less. it didn't make 30 days by the -- by the way. it was sponsored by a fizzy great product. product. he was provided with spare parts and his mother and wife went across the united states as he went through. flying was very difficult and rough. you could not go very far. you were subject to weather and wind. and there was always the crash landings. there were as a few of those things. he didn't make it in 30 days. we will, keep on going,

pay your expenses. he got to santa monica california, literally taxied his airplane into the pacific ocean. when he finally got there, the only original parts of the airplane where the two wing struts and the elevator. the rest of the airplane had been completely replaced at the crossing. that we have taken a look at the .right flyer, let's go back the hangers to either side, we will see probably in a later show, the world war ii section. we will go back to the world war i section where we have a curtis flyer from 1911. let's look at aviation as a develops throughout the end of world war i. now we are in the world war i hager in virginia beach aviation museum. kind of continuing the sequence as we go through the development

of aviation. we look at the curtiss pusher airplane. curtis in val -- invented the angs, a big difference. i was sure you how it works. the difference is significant, and is the first to land and .ake off of a ship it is rather open, the pilot has a simple seat in front of it. there was a wheel well in front of him. it is to elevators. the first is the canard, up in front, and the other is well behind and it picks up like a normal elevator. the problem with the canard is they are very difficult to fly. the real point that counts is the fact that has the curtis l ron -- aileron on it.

they were the same principle in between. curtis did not know whole lot. he was learning as he went along. one of the things he did was putting the ailerons between the wings. he did do it, and it worked out. to fly.xhausting a lot of these were. they did not understand control harmonization. in other words, you are flying this airplane, you are doing it constantly in pitch with your hands around. you can see how the structure was. they did have fuselages, things going on from here. and this is the way many airplanes were up until world war i began. let's go a look at the larry of -- blario. blario was one of the few combat airplanes that started the wing

warping principle. the french had eight training airplane. the open structure, the carpeting along the side is very realistic. the observer in the back, called them observers with fire and people in the air. it was impossible to break eight big machine gun fire over the propeller. it -- got a tale skit on tail skid on it. nearly all world war i airplanes used a skid. some of our replicas have a tail on it. a normal type elevator, the big thing to watch is this is what wing working look like. -- warping looking like. , this was thetive state of the war in 1915.

let's go take a look at another curtis, compare that to the curtiss pusher we looked at before. we will look at the famous jenny, which became a standard trainer all the way through. people in the cap -- cockpit with control. the particular one is a true jenny. it is one in the world war i collection, a restoration rather than a replica or reproduction. the painting on this, we stay local all the way through. this is the first airplane that landed in the big field on the becameide of james what an air force base. this is the first army air force plane to land there. the jenny is on a better biplane structure. the cockpit is now enclosed, the fuselage is now enclosed. there is still a lot of wires on these early airplanes. it is one of the things they had to do to keep the structure

rigid. an old joke was you took a pigeon with you, you would store it somewhere inside the wing and let the pigeon go. the escape, you are missing a wire. escaped, you are missing a wire. it gets its name from the pilotstion jn4, and started calling it jenny. very popular, it was a trainer, then it became a trainer not only for the military but civilian pilots as well. when you read the history throughout the roaring 20's and the barnstorm going through, this is one of their favorite planes. after world war i, many work available as surplus aircraft, and they were flying all over the place. lindbergh had one trying to earn an extra dollar. controlled, one can start

-- the instructor fits in one cockpit, the student in the other. you had to holler over the wind have the person. you can see they are close enough together that the guy in fact to lean forward and actually cap the shoulders of the guy in front. was awasn't the -- there device invented that was nothing more than a garden hose with a funnel on one end for the instructor to talk into. instead of earphones, another one for the student, but the student couldn't talk back. it was better than none. would throw it into the slipstream, that would really get your attention. this is the way they trained into the 30's -- 1930's using the jenny's. that wasn't the only way. we looked at the big bleriot

over here, we have a smaller bleriot over there. learned tons that fight in france, later on, the early american air service guys trained with the french. the french method is they put you in a little bleriot with the wings tapped out and wit let you weren't -- and would let you run up and down. , theycond training flight give you more wind and more engine, you would hop up and down the field. take off, get airborne, do some turns, land on the final side. turn you around, do more. when you are ready for the big day, you are talking to your instructor on the ground, pass you on the shoulder and goes, bonne chance, you make your real first solo flight.

you can see where they considered the dual control .ethod kind of sissified to back to the war, this is not really a warplane except as a trainer. it trained a lot of americans before they went over and became popular throughout the 1920's and 1930's. i can't imagine doing loops, roles and spins with this, but they did. -- the e1,at thee -1 does not look like much of a warplane right now with the teddy bear, but this is the first with ath a machine gun one fr revolutionary idea at the time. instead of trying to aim a gun in the wind, just point the whole airplane at your enemy, fire your gun. it was a relatively simple thing. there was a camera going round and round, going through a series of rods up against the

machine gun. the cam was saying, shoot, don't shoot, shoot, don't shoot, that isow they managed to avoid shooting their own propellers off. it was revolutionary. the war started december 14, but it wasn't until the summer of 1915 that it was getting hot, and the folk are was one of the reasons. it wasn't until the u.s. -- the french and british came up with the newport gliders that they could get over the fokker skirts. we now look at one of the ultimate fighters of world war i, and that is the fookkkker d7. some of them had bmw engines in them. in thes written versailles treaty, the germans would give away all of their fokkers to the french and

british and even the u.s. rigidly built, strong structure, fast airplane, reasonably maneuverable, not as fast as the other plane, but it could maneuver. this airplane's secret to success was it was easy to fly. i mentioned earlier how hard it was. if you want to keep it spinning, it is hard to pay attention to where the enemy is answered him down. this could do all of that. andcould go up and hang pull up under the enemy aircraft and stay there for a minute. other fighters would fall into a horrible spin, they could shoot for a while and then fall down. it made a mediocre pilot into a good one, good for an airplane. there was a lot of discussion on the pilots. they start out pretty young. there was a famous saying about let -- life expectancy was two

weeks. that was exaggerated. some of the campaigns were about that short, but staying allowed -- around for a long time was rare. most of them were 19, 20 years old. tech flying was also a different world, being a compact would be different. one of the problems, you always have wind coming over. some have small windscreens, others didn't. you see the machine guns are you getin your face, gunpowder in your face. and the other problem, there is no heaters and air-conditioning, and they weren't pressurize. you were out there in the elements. we give rides and open contact -- cockpit biplanes.

see how bad the wind buffeting is, you are constantly living in the wind. summertime wasn't too bad, but think about wintertime and how cold it was up there. they had with the big furry suits even subzero temperatures. this airplane was capable of sustained flight above 20,000 feet. they could do that, but there isn't enough air to breathe. there was a lot of speculation some of the losses were not because they did something, that an enemy outsmarted them, but they did something stupid because of lack of oxygen when they were flying up there. they normally had a warm suit, everybody flew in uniform in those days. you see the big brown suits, baggy coveralls, but that was something to keep you warm and keep the oil off of you. they all wore goggles. some of them would take the powder puffs and strap it to their hands to the could wipe dirt and oil off of their goggles. white scarves are a hollywood

invention. they eventually, as the war went on, they started to relax the uniforms and the neckties and stiff dollars were not necessary. -- callers are not necessarily. you need to find the bad guy. you are always within your head around. -- moving your head around. they did start wearing silk scarves. i understand purple with polka dots was very popular, and there were white ones. many a time a guy would come back from london or paris and he would have a ladies silk stocking. the subject of parachutes always comes up. parachutes were not used well into the german side until the very end of the war. reasons changed radically. there was never a good explanation. the rational ones that they were too heavy, adding to the weight

of the lightweight airport -- airplanes. others, you are cowards. that turned out to be bogus. one of the other things jen's used to carry was a small pistol. a service use probably on the ground to fight someone behind lines if you land, but more important than that, your airplane is on over the could jump side or put yourself out of your own misery. many people ask about the crazy 7.mouflage for this fokker d , this ishas the same the authentic way. this is manufactured with this pattern on it. you can see it. they flipped it over the wing, and the way all the fokker aircraft were manufactured, they it shrinks down, and

and drives and puts a nice surface and good waterproof surface, and that is why it has a unique sound if you touch it. hand,rmans on the other this was their standard and they did cover most of their plaintiff with camouflage. -- their planes with camouflage, but they were big on individuality. we are over here. it is an unusual wing structure, but the significance of this airplane, it was the first designed around a forward firing machine gun. the forward scourge i talked about had a machine adapted to an air gun. camo, from theth 1.5 strider. we were talking about markings and the germans and how they glorified individual pilots. always. -- the u.k. was

drab and difficult to see from underneath. you think of it as kind of boring. they will allow a squadron marking, a checkerboard pattern on the stripe and round which lasted into world war ii. the british treated their pilots like almost anybody else. it was late in the war when they realized the publicity of the individual guys that were doing well was worth to keep more out of, so they started glorifying their pilots more. the first part of the war was interesting. we have gone through development ing the war and wing warp 1930's fokker d7 in this -- which lasted into the 1930's. when world war i ended, there was stagnation in aviation. everything looks like a fokker d7.

engines were bigger and faster, but no real development until combat. in 1939, all of a sudden there were model planes, of mention -- big machine guns, that is where real development came. the guise of world war i set the original up. there was a famous german, early days of working, and the real organization was tactics. rules for bunch of air combat. the modern guise of the u.s. navy and united states air force still pull out his rules. it is hard to imagine that world war i for the united states started over 100 years ago, and this day we are at now. things changed dramatically, some things have changed, some have it. come to the virginia beach is the mnc airplanes through

history. -- and see airplanes through history. you can hear stories i did not have the chance to cover this time. announcer 1: you can watch this and other american artifacts programs by visiting our website at c-span.org/history. we have a special webpage at c-span.org to help you follow the supreme court. go to supreme court right hand top of the page. on the supreme court paid, you see four of the most recent oral arguments heard by the court this term and click on view all to see all of the arguments are covered by c-span. you can find recent appearances by many of the supreme court justices or watch justices in their own words, including one-on-one interviews in the past few months with justices kagan, thomas, and ginsburg. there is a calendar for the term, a list of c