This past December 17th (1998), marked the 93rd anniversary of manned powered flight, by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk beach in North Carolina. The rickety Wright Flyer traveled an amazing 120 feet. Twenty years later, on May 2, 1923, Lts. Kelly and Macready, in a Fokker FIV flew from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, to San Diego in 26 hours and 50 minutes, at an average speed of 92 miles per hour. Four years later, Lindbergh flew his Ryan monoplane across the Atlantic ocean. Twelve years later in 1939 Pan Am began transatlantic flights in Sikorsky flying boats...and the first turbojet airplane flew in Germany; the Heinkel 178.

From 1939 to the end of WWII in 1945, aviation made huge strides, especially in Germany, where jet propulsion and rocketry saw great advances. In 1947, Yeager broke the sound barrier. At wars end, German rocket scientists were employed by both the Russians and the Americans giving birth to the space race, a tenuous reaching out for interplanetary flight, which saw the Russians launching the first satellite, and putting the first man into space. But America finally succeeded in landing the first men on the Moon in 1969. In only 66 years, man had gone from flying 120 feet, to walking on the moon and returning!

Back in 1919, the Bauhaus brothers decided to build an airplane here in Carpinteria. Their B-3 flew in 1920, the third flight killing Will Bauhaus when the machine crashed. Will’s son, Hugo, quit school in 1928 after the airport opened here. He started working there and soon was learning aircraft and engine mechanics, and attained his Aircraft and Engine certificate before he was 16, and shortly after his 16th birthday was awarded his private pilot’s license. Hugo went on to get his commercial license in 1931. He then barnstormed across three different states in an autogiro, a unique aircraft employing both a conventional engine, but using unpowered rotors for lift. He then went on to fly for the military during WWII, eventually learning to fly B-17s and B-29s. He went from flying a Jenny and Wacos to the autogiro, and then on to the most modern bomber of it’s day, the B-29! To me, Hugo Bauhaus embraces all the things that made man’s advance in aviation so dramatic. He embodies that pioneering spirit and courage that it took to bring aviation as far as it has come. Indeed, he knew many of those pioneers. After accomplishing all he did in aviation, he finally got his high school diploma!

But here we are in 1997. The SR-71 crossed the country in a little over three hours a couple years ago, the sonic boom heralding the start of that flight heard here in town. The space shuttle makes regular trips into space, and will soon be replaced with the Space Plane. And there are many things we don’t know about, or aren’t supposed to. Aurora,(SR-79?) which is said to fly at Mach 6, with a new mode of propulsion, a test bed for the Space Plane, and a spy plane. But what else exists? What other craft are being tested or even utilized without our knowledge? Silent black triangles, and manta ray shaped craft? And what are the objects that have been seen again and again in Camarillo? Craft that just fade from view and disappear? Are they ours, or do they come from different planets or solar systems...or dimensions?

Many ancient texts refer to craft that flew through the sky, and people who flew in them...people from the sky: from the stars. So we have to wonder, is powered flight only 94 years old? Or has it, and the people who invented it, been here since the dawn of humanity, itself?

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