1919: Learning to Fly in a "Jenny" Just Like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart

Edward O. Southard learned to fly the Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” at March Field in Riverside, California, in 1919. About eighteen months earlier, William Muir Russel was honing his pilot skills at Ashburn Field and then Rantoul Aviation Field, both in Illinois. But that’s where the differences in their early flying school experiences end. They both learned to fly in the same plane. They both saw frequent crashes. They both mastered the same controls, take-offs, and landings. And they both first f...