First to Fly: North Carolina and the Beginnings of Aviation.

By Thomas C. Parramore. (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, c. 2002. Pp. [xvi], 372. $29.95, ISBN 0-8078-2676-6.)

As the site of the Wright brothers' historic first flights in a powered airplane at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903, North Carolina will be forevers linked with the history of aviation. Less well known are the Wrights' crucial glider experiments at Kitty Hawk between 1900 and 1902 that led to the breakthrough flights in 1903. Thomas Parramore's First to Fly pivots on these seminal events in aviation history. He uses the Wright story as a foundation for building a case that North Carolina played an important role in the development of aviation to 1930, the date with which he concludes the book. While Parramore offers a convincing argument that local Kitty Hawk residents assisted the Wrights significantly during their visits to North Carolina, his book is far less successful when it moves beyond the epic events at Kitty Hawk.

The story of Wilbur and Orville Wright and the invention of the airplane has been told many times. Parramore adds to the literature with new and interesting details about the involvement of the local lifesaving crewmen and fishermen in the Wrights' flying experiments on North Carolina's Outer Banks. The brothers' hosts graciously welcomed them and helped make their stay as comfortable and productive as possible. Parramore does more than simply tell us how locals assisted with launching and handling the aircraft; he presents the Wrights' history-making achievement from the North Carolinians' perspective. He also revives details of the Wrights' return to Kitty Hawk for further flight testing in 1908 and 1911, and the brothers' consideration, although unrealized, of establishing some sort of permanent flight facility in North Carolina. This is the book's central strength, and Parramore makes a valuable contribution here.

The rest of the work, however, contributes very narrowly to the history of aviation. It is little more than a series of brief biographical sketches of any North Carolina resident who did anything associated with flight. Parramore does not address any broad historical questions, nor does he offer any larger context for the often obscure stories he relates. Some of his subjects are indeed notable personalities in the history of flight, such as Kiffin Rockwell, a pilot in the "Lafayette Escadrille" unit during World War I, and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. But the only reason Parramore includes them is that they were from North Carolina. Other figures and events covered become historical footnotes. The book's organizational framework is simply a listing of aeronautical activity in North Carolina. Such material is beneficial to state and local historians, but it is not the stuff of a meaningful history of aviation in its formative decades.

The aviation history enthusiast will mine a fair number of interesting tidbits from First to Fly, and the unique perspective Parramore adds on the Wrights' all-important flight tests at Kitty Hawk makes the book worthwhile. But as for demonstrating the key role of North Carolina in the development of flight technology after the Wright brothers, the author does not make his case.

PETER L. JAKAB

National Air and Space Museum 

Smithsonian Institution