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Boys in particulars are fascinated by mechanics and mechanical equipment. There was a love affair with first locomotives and then later cars. Cars were especially important because it was something a youth could acquire and work on. The airplane was more piece of equipment that fascinated boys. Some boys may have heard of the Wright Briothers flight, but the World War I air war is what caught the attention of American boys. This was especially the case oafter America entered the War (1917) and the newspapers began writing about American air aces. After the War, Bsrnstomers brought airplanes to the remotest corner of America. If a barnstormer landed in a nearby field, boys would pester their fathers to take them to see it and if mom wasn't with them, even for a ride. Air tricks began appearing in the movie newsreels. Then Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic (1927). The result was the first great American media hero. In this regard, the Juxtaposition of technology, celeberity, and consumerism was a foretaste of modern America. [Alcorn] Every boy saw himself as a future Lindbergh. And boys in America wanted to dress like like him and other pilots with leather aviator cap and a leather flying jacket. Air plane toys became very popular as did model airplane model kits. Building models became an important part of American boyhood. The kits at the time were built from balsa wood kits and paper fabric. Girls for the most part did not share the boys' intertest. Amelia Aerheart, however, did cath theinterest of some girls. Boys could not, unlike cars, assily acquire a plane. But the mechanics of the planes of the era were much blike cars, driven by internal comustion piston engine. This meant that there was a vast pool of American youth that were potenial mechanics to maintain aircraft with relatively limited training. This was less true with the Germans and even less the case of the Japanese. German boys, however, go involved in gliding, an activity promoted by the Hitler Youth after the NAZIs seized power (1933). Few American boys got involved in gliding.
Alcorn, Aaron L. "Flying into modernity: model airplanes, consumer culture, and the making of modern boyhood in the early twentieth century," Journal of History and Technology, Vol. Issue 2 (June 2009), pp. 115-146.
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