Reporting from the Dayton Air Show, Rob Stephens speaks to Jeff Moss Sr and his son Jay about making aviation history in the cockpits of attack helicopters
Dayton, Ohio is a city known for the birth of powered flight. Orville and Wilbur Wright built the first powered and controlled, heavier-than-air aircraft in their bicycle shop on West Third Street in 1903.
A little over a century later, a young Jeff Moss Jr is leaning on a sign detailing the history and specifications of the Bell AH-1 Cobra at the Dayton Air Show at Dayton International Airport. An example of the fearsome Vietnam-era gunship towers over him as he describes the aircraft and its abilities to onlookers. Jay, as he is known, spent his childhood hanging around with his father, Jeff Moss Sr, at the Army Aviation Heritage Foundation (AAHF) in Hampton, Georgia, often fetching coffee for the mechanics in the maintenance hangar. His father was happy for him to show an interest in aviation, so long as what was said in the hangar wasn’t repeated to his mother.
