Roots Of The Junior Birdmen

It only took US$300.00 (approx. US$4,130.00 in today's moolah) to take off:

The Curtiss JN-4, built by the Curtiss Aeroplane Company in Buffalo, New York, became a mainstay of the US Army Air Service, which bought thousands of them to train pilots. It was a rudimentary plane, even then, with one seat for a student and another for the instructor. It had two fixed wheels and a wooden tail skid. Fitted with a 90-horsepower Curtiss OX–5 V8 engine, the biplane could hit 75 mph and fly as high as 11,000 feet. It had a wingspan of 43 feet, weighed less than a ton fully loaded, and could stay airborne for just over two hours. Most of them carried no weapons and were used solely for training.

What made the plane so special, and so popular, was the fact that it was mass-produced. The JN-4D, the most popular model, came out in 1917, and four other companies joined Curtiss in producing enough of them to meet wartime demand. All told, nearly 7,000 Jennies were built, most of them JN–4Ds produced during the 12 months before the end of the war.

As popular as the plane was with the Army, the Jenny came into her own after the war. The government sold hundreds of surplus JN-4s, some of them still in their shipping containers, to anyone with $300 (about $4,130 today), says Jeffery S. Underwood, a historian at the United States Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. The plane proved especially adept at barnstorming, becoming the most popular aircraft used in that daring sport. Thousands of pilots learned to fly in a Jenny, including Amelia Earhart.