Armistice Day 1918: NY’s Southern Tier Aircraft Industry Massive Layoffs

In World War 1, New York’s southern tier was a significant aircraft supplier to the U.S., England, France, Russia and Italy. Glenn Curtiss Industries and Ithaca’s Thomas-Morse produced over 10,000 airplanes in the four years of the war. Armistice Day in November 1918 brought immediate contract cancelations and over 1,500 local jobs were pink-slipped that first week in Elmira, Hammondsport and Ithaca. WRFI’s Fred Balfour interviews Rick Leisenring, curator of the Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport NY, to focus on central New York’s aircraft industry in the first two decades of the 20th century.