When Orville Wright made the first successful flight of an airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903, no one could have envisioned the impact that the historic occasion would have on Hagerstown, Maryland, and the tri-state area of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. When Sherman M. Fairchild bought controlling interest in Hagerstown's Kreider-Reisner Aircraft in 1929, the
stage was set for the newly formed Fairchild Aircraft to become a major contributor to the country's World War II efforts. In 1939, the company
was awarded a contract to build 270 PT-19...