In Washington, D.C., a Ryan company pilot takes off vertically from a street in front of the Pentagon in the Ryan X-13 Vertijet VTOL research aircraft, transitions to horizontal flight, retraces the route that Orville Wright and Lt. Benjamin Foulois made on the final acceptance flight of the 1909 Military Flyer, and returns for a vertical landing.
The Air Force is on track to reach its annual goal of graduating 1,500 new pilots that had proved elusive to this point, one year after the service launched a sweeping overhaul of its undergraduate pilot training program, Air Education and Training Command said Sept. 14.
