John A. Macready Collection

John A. Macready (1887-1979) enlisted in the US Air Service in 1917 and earned his pilot's wings at Rockwell Field, San Diego. While a flight instructor at the Army Pilot School at Brooks Field,Texas, he authored a book, "The All Through System of Flying Instruction as Taught at Brooks Field" which became the basic manual for student pilots in the early years of US military aviation. During the postwar years, he was assigned to the Air Service Experimental Test Center at McCook Field, Ohio, where he was the chief test pilot for the Air Service from 1920 to 1926. On October 5, 1922, Lt. Macready and his associate, Lt. Oakely Kelley established a world flight endurance record of 35 hours, 18.5 minutes in the skies over San Diego. This endurance flight led to experiments that produced the first air-to-air refueling system. In May 1923, Lts. Macready and Kelley took off from Roosevelt Field, New York in a Fokker T-2 and landed some 27 hours later at Rockwell Field, San Diego after having completed the first nonstop US transcontinental flight. Besides these endurance and altitude flights, Macready also had the following firsts: he made the first night parachute jump; he invented the first aviator glasses; he was the world's first crop duster; he took the first photos of a solar eclipse; he made the first aerial photographic survey of America; he conducted the first tests in a pressurized cockpit; and he was the first and only person to three times win the Mackay Trophy for outstanding aviation achievement.