city of brooklyn had reached a million people. >> then at 8:00, on lectures in history. >> and that is the real sort of interesting thing about country music is that it's the music of poor white people. people who were privileged to be white and i'll talk about that in a second, but also people who are under-privileged in terms of their economic status. >> and how the origins were impacted on country music. then sunday afternoon at 4:00, a real american. a tangle of state and local problems created evidence that this crusade of society against its greatest enemies may be slow or worse level off and fade. this was the climate, the land, and the unfinished task that

faced lyndon johnson on the 1st of december, 1956. >> the film, the president, 1956, documents the final year of president johnson, his meeting with the mexican president, awarding the medal of honor to a marine who fought in vietnam, saw celebrating the holidays with his family at his texas ranch. and william hazelgrove, the secret presidency of edith wilson, she was the president's second wife and she buffered access to the president as he recovered from a stroke in 1919. for our complete coverage go to c-span.org. >> each week, we take you to historic places to learn about history, located in virginia beach, virginia, the military aviation is home to one of the

largest private collections of world war i. we toured the world war ii hangar and took a flight to learn how pilots prepared for combat. this is the second of a two-part program. >> i'm mike spaulding, i'm chief aviation pilot here at virginia beach, virginia. i'm in charge of all the airplanes and training for the museum and pilots. and today we'll talk about the boeing steerman. it had different numbers depending on the service it was in, whether it was in the navy or whether it was in the air force. it could be a pt 13, or 7-pt extensive it -- 17, if it was in the army air corps. and the navy called them the

yellow peril, and mainly because it can be a handful of an airplane for the first airplane you're learning to fly. but to set you up for progressions down the road in more complicated airplanes. but this airplane, among other types, basically taught all the military aviators, and many never saw an airplane, and the first plane they saw was the boeing spearman. the reason they use this airplane is because it's very basic. mostly made out of wood. and held together by steel flying wires and then covered in a fabric back then which was a cotton fabric, and then with like a dope-type material. there is modern stuff they have on them the make them last

longer. the reason they made tens of thousands and there are only several hundred of them today. was because they were not meant to last, they're made of fabric and wood and sat out in the elements. and pretty much if they did not get destroyed in training they rotted away and just were scrapped. but this was the first airplane as i said that they all flew. and we're going to take a flight in it so we'll tell you a couple of things about it so when we go fly you will know what you're looking at. it's a very basic airplane. and it basically has just the basic instruments to fly that you need to fly an airplane. an air speed indicator. an altimeter. you don't even need an attitude indicator because you look at the window. so you're just learning how to get this plane off the ground, fly it around, do coordinated turns and come back in and land it and do that continually, successfully. in the program that both the army air corps and the navy had,

not everybody was able to get the hang of it and do it. so what happened then is you washed out. at any point in the navy, the washout, says instead of flying planes you will be carrying gun on the infantry, or cutting potatoes, who knows? but anyway, you're no good to fly. so many made it, but there was always a certain percentage that did not. may have gotten to solo, and just can't seem to move forward. the ones that ended up flying, they went from this, which was a basic trainer which means you learn the basics of flying until you move onto an advance trainer. you have more control, more fighter like, from there, everybody goes to wherever they go even in a bomber or fighter. it did not matter where you were

going, you went through the progression of the basic trainer and then the advanced trainer. and in here, the student sits in the back. it's a little harder to see. but these old type tail wheel airplanes are called conventional gear planes. you can't see how of the fronts when you're taxiing. you have to do s turns when you're taxiing, so you can look side to side to make sure you're not going to run into anything. the instructor sits in the front. they had a pretty crude type intercom, which basically was a tube, a little more modern than a string, but the tube doesn't have to be tight. you can talk through a mask and communicate that way. sometimes with hand signals. there is also a mirror up top where he would look at them and

they could communicate by looking at each other and hand signals and things like that. basically, they took off, you go out and learn how to fly the airplane, do turns and enoumanes in a coordinated fashion. you heard the term needle and a ball, and there is a ball in there, in your turns you want to keep centered. if you do that, it's a coordinated turn, and otherwise the plane is skidding around. you try to get to the point where you're not doing that. and when you learn to fly in the air and learn to maneuver, and take off, you learn to land. the landing is always the last thing you get. that is the last part of the progression. because that is the hardest part, to do it continuously and over and over. and when you do that, the instructor solos you. that is when he gets out and you do your first flight by yourself. and that is quite a -- quite a mark in your aviation, something

you never forget. so after they do that, they will do many hours of just solo flights, and then they will do solo cross country and learn how to navigate cross country and go from one airport to another and get where they're going. and back safely. and this whole progression takes about a year and they have about a couple hundred hours in the primary and the advanced trainers, by the time they're ready to move on to their airplane that they're going to fly when they get out. they are open cockpit airplanes. that was just kind of the normal thing back then. they had training bases all over the country, the north and the south. so if you were lucky you got to train down in florida and mississippi, if not so lucky you trained in minnesota. and you wore bigger coats. but they all wore flying helmets

and goggles and trained all year round. so they just dressed for it. there was a war on, so you did what you had to do. it was probably the most comfortable you were going to be when you went overseas. so everybody was exposed to the elements. hot can be as bad as cold when you're down in south florida with the humidity and 95 degrees and you have a flight suit on and everything. so it was not easy. and it could be pretty grueling just on you physically not to mention mentally. but we had the best trained pilots in the world. we did have a very regimented pilot program that was in line with some of our allies, but many of the access aircraft in countries didn't have the type of training program we had. they kind of rushed them into it, which really was why our

pilots were accomplished. sometimes they didn't really have the best machine but could out-fly a better enemy machine just because of their abilities. this model training carries 46 gallons of fuel and burns 24 miles an hour. it could burn close to four hours with no problem. good for cross country stuff but mostly designed just for the local area and the short cross country type thing. but again, you got to take the cross country in minnesota -- january, an open cockpit you want them to be short. >> yeah, these kids, like i said never seen an airplane so they did not know what to expect, just like anybody today walking off the street and taking a ride. but it's not windy in the airplane, but you know, you stick your hand out there and you can feel what makes the wings work. and that is part of the aerodynamics of them learning.

you can feel the elements outside, wherein the closed cockpits of the later day, or even the advanced trainer when they have the closed cockpit you kind of lose that other sense of your speed, that you're moving. this is a north american at-6, meaning advanced trainer. remember we started off with the primary trainer like the steerman, which is what you learn to fly in. and after you learn to fly you went to the advanced trainer, the navy called it an snj. they had their own name for it, for all of their airplanes but it's the same thing as the at-6. from here, what is basically different is you can see it has a canopy over it.

it has a controllable pitch prop. much bigger engine, retractible landing gear. so all of these advanced features that the primary trainers do not have. so that is what you're learning here. it goes a lot faster. you're learning to put the gear up and down. manipulate the engine differently depending on your flight characteristics that you're in at the time. this progression is about as long as the other because you're learning a lot more and a lot more about the aerodynamics and the speed, not just the basic flying quality. you take everything you learn there and apply it here and expand it. the air force and the navy had them, as i said. the navy had some with tail hooks on them, so if you were going to end up going to a carrier type thing you would do the carrier thing first before you went to the fighter that was going to go on the carrier. mainly, there is a lot more

instruments in there. a lot more engine instruments. you also use them to train, to do the rods, the machine gun work, you know, some bombing stuff, depending on what you were going in. so the advanced part of the training could go in all different directions. so it was used for a lot of things after you learn how to fly. basically to learn, then to teach you how to fly something much faster and much more advanced that you will be getting into after you left here. the at-6 was primarily used for training. later in the war they did use some for combat. not very many, they did arm some up and use them. it had specific purposes for them, some kind of short range, low altitude bombing type things for a specific need they had. but in general it was used for

training. again, the instructor sits in the back, the fighter in the front by himself and flying the fighter-type airplane. but you learned everything you were going to do in the fighter in this. the aerobatics also, they would be more air fighting so you could be more comfortable doing whatever you needed to do with the airplane to get a kill or keep from being killed. with every hour you flew, there were many hours of classroom training and studying the books and that is why it took so long. it was not just the flying part. there was a lot of classroom in groups. and like i said, the manuals that you have to study yourself and to keep from getting washed out. because you could get washed out at any point in this program pretty much until you got up to the fighters where they felt they had spent enough effort on

you. you were going to make it from this point, at any point in training you could get washed out. >> if you noticed the trainers were already brightly colored. all of the training bases had their own markings and their own ways of identifying where they were from. but they were generally all really brightly colored. and that was so -- they could find you. if you had an issue or you landed somewhere you were not supposed to be or -- very easy to spot from the air, because remember, a lot of times they didn't have radios so they had to go out and look for you if you didn't come back so it was much easier to find you if you had an incident somewhere when you were off by yourself. progressing on, after you got out of flight training and now you have got your wings and you're going out to either a fighter or bomber or something, wherever they put you, one of the early modern fighters we had

was the p-40 here, you recognize as a shark's teeth. it was a very good airplane, very instrumental, we used it -- the chinese used it. and many of -- are familiar with the flying tigers, which is what this paint scheme is for. but the paint schemes vary depending on where they were in the world to match the lay of the land. most of them are camouflaged with the olive drab green so that the enemy aircraft would have a hard time finding you when they were below you. many times, they were light colored underneath so if they were below you, they couldn't see you. so there is a reason many times why they were painted the colors they were painted, but much of the markings on either side, some of them are personalized by

the specific pilot and basically called nose art. this airplane is in the markings of the ones flying over china. basically, these planes, much bigger engine, a very good fighter. the only thing that came with this thing, it ended up being under-powered to help out the bombers and to go high. couldn't go high because it didn't have a second stage super charger. it had just a single stage, so it did very well down low in strafing and all that. but the bombers flew high, they couldn't really get up there to help them out or really couldn't get themselves out of the fighter's way. so when the p-51 came along it basically had the same engine but the british had basically put the merlin engine in it. with the super charger, then it

could fly up hard and fast and then a long way. strafing is when you go really fast and go down and get right on the ground and start to shoot your guns and just shoot at whatever needs to be shot at down there. trains or convoy of vehicles, or buildings. but you're basically right at the tree tops. and unloading the guns and then back up and go, either back and do it again or when you're out of ammo, or before you want to save a little bit to get back. then you head back. but basically strafing is just dive down, get right on the ground, shoot everything you intended to shoot and then back up. strafing is not even always planned. you support your ground crew and the infantry down there and you may be able to see things that they cannot. so you will clear the way for them by strafing, and blowing up

tanks or, the armored vehicles or other infantry. so you may see nothing or you may have the mission and you could be out there a couple of hours. usually you run out of ammunition or fuel if you're out there just strictly strafing. now here we have the p-51. almost everybody recognizes the p-51, because it looks like it's going fast just sitting here. very sleek airplane, very fast airplane. it almost didn't come to be however, because it had the same engine that the p-40 did. this is a much heavier airplane, so it really was not doing the job. and it could not really get out of its own way. it was good for low level strafing and bombing stuff but that is not what they really wanted. they really needed support for the bombers, to help the bombers

out. it took the british to say hey, let's put our merlin super charge in the airplane and see what we can do with it. and that is what saved the airplane and made the airplane what it was. but as in most airplanes, the guns were in the wings. not all of them. early ones, they had them in the nose and would time it with the engine so it would go through the propeller and not hit the propeller. but it was much easier to put them in the wings and this gun would sit right here. this door would come out, and they laid all the ammo out, so it would feed properly and it comes out the little chutes in the bottom the shelves do. when you pull the trigger, it shot the guns on both sides at the same time. because it would give you some yaw if you did one side or the other so it would kind of be hard to aim. so they shot together so you

would stay straight. usually about every fifth round was luminescent so you could see it. it would kind of heat up so you could see where the bullets were going, otherwise you would have no idea where they were going. and you will see that in some of the footage when you look at world war ii footage. most of them had gun cameras so they could monitor the kills and document the kills, all the fighter pilots were trying to become an ace. to be an ace you had to have five kills. and oddly enough, some guys never got there. and some of them got there on their first day out. not many of those, but there were some that just had that skill or luck level to get them all five right at once.

but it took five kills to be an ace. and every kill you got the flag of the adversary on your airplane to mark your kills. everybody had a suit, you can't put it on after the fact, a lot of bombers may or may not wear them. but they were in the airplane, so you had to maneuver around the airplane in a bomber. so you usually had to maneuver, it was not a split second thing where you had to jump out, so you put it on or had time the bail out. because the captain gave the command to bail out unless it was obvious that something else was going on. but here you're pretty much by yourself in the fighter airplane, so you have it on. your parachute is also your seat cushion so you're sitting behind it and it's not constraining you

in any way. but there are a lot of stripes to contain. so to bail out all the canopies had an emergency release so it would go either way. there were various ways to get out. sometimes it had to be whatever it took. but normally you would just kind of get up over your knees and lean on the side and go down, beyond the horizontal stabilizer. sometimes you just had to get out of it, it was on fire, you had to get out of it. as most airplane were used, not specifically, but mostly they landed over there. you took off from europe somewhere and went over to germany or from the allied side, so it was basically a river between the battles. the navy stuff was a little different. there was a lot of water so they were on boats and stuff like that. but the army stuff was mostly in

the european theater or land-based operations. just like we talked about the b-40 being the very early of the modern fighters that we had for world war ii. this is the navy version of a very early fighter. these are grummond-built, but back during the war they were trying to produce so many airplanes during the war that grumman in this case couldn't build them all, so they contracted with general motors, they built a lot of the airplanes, and this is the automotive. this is an fm-2 wild cat, a very simple airplane, came out from an actual bi-plane fixed gear, before world war ii, but it was a carrier based airplane. and they basically took it and

modernized it and took the top off. the older ones didn't have folding wings but very shortly after that they did that and the reason they see the wings fold, you see most of the fighter airplanes is so they could get on the carrier and fold them up and make them small and put them over the side and go down the elevator or park them underneath. but this airplane was really very basic. everything on it is mechanical. you cranked the gear up with a hand crank. and it does a chain and pull s the landing gear up and put it down that way. the flaps use the engine off the air to put them down. everything he feels else on it y crank. everything else is just little cranks and handles and things like that. almost war i-ish in the

transition. it was very successful, in flying against the japanese zero, the zero was very nimble, which this is also. but the zero was very light and when they were trying to do escape maneuvers and pull up the zero could out-climb them and get them. what came out of the wild cat was the hell cat, the power, it turned the tables. this is a grumman tb-m. it stands for torpedo bomber. the m, built by general motors. many of them got into the war effort. it was everything towards trying to win the war.

lot of production of cars and airplanes for recreation and things like that. didn't go necessarily by the wayside but was severely cut back in an effort to win the war. but the tb-m, again, another carrier-based airplane, as you can see much bigger. everything on it is hydraulic. you couldn't do anything by hand in these airplanes. everything is hydraulic. the bombay doors, the swing, the landing gear is hydraulic. everything in there is hydraulic. it took a crew of three. you had a bombadier and a gunner in the back and in the top. and of course you know the pilot. they basically operated off carriers and would go out and torpedo bomb japanese ships out in the pacific. and that sort of thing. the cal flaps i minutentioned

before, they were a little more noticeable, like gills, so you can control the temperature, if it gets too hot you can open them or close them if it is getting too cold to regulate the engine temperature. almost all the airplanes were assigned to a specific pilot. and they very rarely interchanged. i wouldn't say they never did. but that is why you see today even the military fighters have the name of the fighter on the airplane. because that is their airplane. it is assigned to them with their crew chief's name on it. they're assigned to them and they're responsible for it. so the bombadeers flew as a crew, this was their airplane. and unless somebody was sick or had an issue or shipped home they had the same crew and

pilot. and that was pretty much standard throughout the military whichever side you were on. the bombadeers had their own training. they used what today a lot of people know as beach 18s. or the navy called them smbs. and they had various other planes that they specifically trained them to use the bomb sites and to drop torpedos and to drop the bombs and do whatever else they did. but they had their own specific training program, and then they all came together when they were assigned to their airplane or their unit. the tbm was involved in quite a few. the turkey chute, this particular airplane was the type that george h.w. bush ditched and was flying when he was rescued out of the pacific. so that is what kind of helped

to make this airplane famous as well. this was the premiere navy fighter, as everyone knows, the corsair, an f 4 u was the particular designation, but this particular model was an fg-1 d. and f-1 fighter, g, good year, and just look general motors and others. this one has folding wings just like all the other airplanes and being a navy fighter, has an r-21 engine, very big. most people recognize this airplane because of its bent wing. that is its own look, the reason

they do that is so the landing gear doesn't have to be so long. it doesn't have anything to do with aerodynamics or anything like that. so they could keep the landing gear shorter so it would fold up in the wheels. in the wheel wells. and the reason they needed to do that is because of the propel are rig -- propeller right here. when you get the tail up the prop would be very close to the ground. so it's for propeller clearance is the only reason it was designed like that. i want to thank you for coming by and taking a small tour of the military aviation museum. we have many more airplanes, about 50 flying airplanes. so again, that was just a small sample, come by and see us.

you can watch this and other programs by visiting our website at c-span.org/history. and this week, just before 5 eastern, architecture barry louis talked about the transportation of the manhattan bridge and why the transportation turned at the 20th century. >> when the brooklyn bridge was opened it did not put the ferries out of business. they were still running at capacity. by the mid-1890s, the city of brooklyn was by then, the count of at least a million people. >> then at 8:00, the lectures on american history. >> and that is sort of the interesting thing of country music is that it's the music of poor white people, people who were privileged to be white and i'll talk about that in a second. but also people who were

under-privileged in terms of their class identity and their economic opportunities. >> dickenson college professor, cotton siler, on the definitions of whiteness and blackness and colonial america and how it impacted the origins of country music. then sunday at 4:00, a real america. >> a tangle of problems on the american horizon created evidence that the greatest enemies may be slowed or worse, level off and fade. this is the climate, the land, the unfinished task that faced lyndon johnson on december 1st, 1966. >> the film documents the fine month of the year of his presidency, his meeting with the president of mexican on the dam project, the awarding of the marine following the service in vietnam. and a visit with his family on

his texas ranch, and at 8, author of madam presidency, the secret presidency of edith wilson, who was woodrow wilson's wife, she buffered his presidency as he recovered from a stroke. for more, go to c-span.org. military force is one of the things that i think the american public gets impatient about it because they really believe they have this trump card, this great military that can defeat anyone. but it's not true. it is an extraordinary military and very powerful but it can only win in certain situations. and it can only really destroy things. it can't build a new order in its place. >> sunday night on question and answer, journalist and professor mark danner talks about his career and the challenges facing the u.s. war on terrorism. >> what we don't want to do is

respond in such a way that will produce more of these militants, more of these militant organizations. they want us to overreact. they want us to occupy muslim countries so they can build their recruitment. they want us to torture people. they want us to do things that is going to allow them to make their case against us. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern, on c-span's question and answer. each week, american art ifacts takes you to museums and historic places to learn about history, located in virginia beach, the military aviation museum is home to world war i and ii aircraft, most of which are air worthy. we toured to learn about the advances in aviation and pilot training during the