When Aviation Took Off
Amelia Earhart (Dale Jackson)
By Amanda Bellows
This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of the Coolidge Review. Request a free copy of a future print issue.
In 1903, twenty years before Calvin Coolidge became president, a modern miracle occurred. Two brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, flew an engine-powered airplane for twelve seconds over the windswept sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. This moment represented the birth of aviation, opening new frontiers for pilots and creating unprecedented challenges that Coolidge would face during his presidency in the 1920s.
Over the next decade, the field of aviation grew slowly. Flying was a dangerous activity, and deadly accidents took the lives of pilots around the world who competed to fly farther and faster than ever before. But World War I revolutionized the aviation industry when airplanes became an essential component of battle. Pilots used planes to conduct reconnaissance and destroy enemy personnel and materiel through aerial assaults. To meet demand, American factories ramped up the production of British DH-4 aircraft between 1917 and 1918.
Peacetime ushered in new possibilities for aviation, particularly in the realm of commerce.
The era became known as the Golden Age of Aviation.
Taking the Lead
When Coolidge assumed the presidency in August 1923, he immediately faced the question of what the government’s role should be in promoting and regulating the burgeoning aviation industry. During his first annual address to Congress in December of that year, he made clear his view that “laws should be passed regulating aviation,” but he did not offer any details. There was much for Coolidge to consider about government intervention in air travel.
By 1925, Coolidge had begun to solidify his position. In his third annual address to Congress that December, he asserted that the government ought to give “national assistance to the laying out of airways” to increase the safety and efficiency of flight. Such actions were essential for supporting commercial airmail flights, which Congress had recently contracted to private companies following the passage of the Air Mail Act on February 2, 1925.
In May 1926, just months after the address to Congress, Coolidge signed the Air Commerce Act into law. The act dramatically expanded the government’s role in regulating aviation. It empowered the secretary of commerce to “encourage the establishment of airports, civil airways, and other air navigation facilities,” to promote air commerce, to investigate accidents involving aircraft, and to coordinate navigational projects with foreign governments. Going forward, the Commerce Department’s newly created Aeronautics Branch—a forerunner to the Federal Aviation Administration—would seek to improve flight safety.
In his December 1925 address to Congress, Coolidge had emphasized the importance of aviation “both for national defense and commercial development.” The president championed the manufacture of airplanes for defense purposes and the training of military pilots. Here he followed the recommendations of a special aviation board he had created in the fall. Coolidge appointed his friend and former Amherst College classmate Dwight Morrow as chairman. Morrow’s board called for ramping up military aircraft production.
In July 1926, Coolidge signed an act authorizing the military to begin an ambitious five-year program to build more than a thousand new aircraft.
President Coolidge helped ensure that aviation flourished.
Lindbergh and Earhart, American Aviators
In the wake of the Air Commerce Act, the aviation industry grew, but air travel remained hazardous. Still, pilots continued to vie for personal and national glory by setting new distance records. Many young men were tempted by businessman Raymond Orteig’s promise of $25,000 to the first person to fly the route between Paris, France, and the United States. Frenchmen Charles Nungesser and François Coli set off on a westbound flight from Le Bourget, France, to New York on May 8, 1927, but days later, there was no trace of them.
Undeterred by their tragic disappearance, a twenty-five-year-old Minnesotan pilot working for the U.S. Mail Service decided to try his luck at an eastbound flight to Paris. Unlike the Frenchmen, he planned to cross the Atlantic alone. On May 20, 1927, Charles Lindbergh steered his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, down the runway of Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York. Without stopping, he flew for the next thirty-three hours, touching down in front of an ecstatic crowd in Paris.
Coolidge gave Lindbergh the Distinguished Flying Cross on June 11, using the occasion to tout American ingenuity in building airplanes and adapting them for commerce and national defense.
Coolidge had the opportunity to celebrate American aviation again during the last full year of his presidency. In June 1928, Amelia Earhart flew across the Atlantic Ocean as a passenger on the Friendship flight piloted by Wilmer Stultz and mechanic Louis Gordon. An aviator in her own right, Earhart regretted that she was unable to take a turn at the controls due to her unfamiliarity with the Friendship’s equipment. Nonetheless, she became a national hero upon her arrival in Burry Port, Wales.
Coolidge commended Earhart as “the first woman successfully to span the Atlantic by air” and expressed “the great admiration of myself and the people of the United States for [her] splendid flight.” When he welcomed Earhart to the White House for a reception on November 2, he could not have guessed the degree of fame she would reach in the next decade following her own solo flights across vast distances.
Pioneer
The Golden Age of Aviation outlasted Coolidge’s presidency, stretching into the 1930s despite the advent of the Great Depression. But historians should credit Coolidge for the steps he took to ensure the flourishing of the aviation industry. He encouraged Congress to pass meaningful legislation, advocated smart regulation to improve safety and boost trust, and publicly celebrated the pilots and passengers who inspired the nation with their courage.
Although Coolidge never flew in an airplane, he envisioned the future of aviation. In December 1928, marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight, the president said: “The nineteenth century was the railroad and steamboat age. The twentieth century will be known for the development of aeronautics and air transport.”
President Coolidge helped make sure that was so.
Amanda Bellows is the author of The Explorers: A New History of America in Ten Expeditions. She teaches history at the New School’s Lang College of Liberal Arts.
This article appears in the Winter 2025 issue of the Coolidge Review. Request a free copy of a future print issue.