Edmund Turney Allen (January 4, 1896 – February 18, 1943) was a pioneer of modern flight test who flew for nearly every major American aircraft manufacturer and took some of the most famous planes of all time up for their first flights. Early life Allen was born in Chicago, Illinois on 4 January 1896. He had to work for three years after his father died to support his family. He then finished one year at the University of Illinois. Career World War I When the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the US Army Signal Corps as a lieutenant. He initially served as an instructor pilot but then was sent to the British flight test center in England to learn flight testing techniques. Before the armistice in November 1918, he returned to the US Army's flight test center at McCook Field, Ohio, to apply his flight experience and overseas observations. After the armistice, he became the first test pilot for the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics at Langley Field, Virginia. In 1919, he returned to the University of Illinois for a year and then studied aeronautical engineering for two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Between the wars In 1922 Allen designed and built the Allen AES-1 and Allen AES-2 gliders, with E.P. Warner and Otto C. Koppen, at the Aeronautical Engineering Society in New York. From 1923 to 1925, he worked as a freelance test pilot and also worked as a civilian test pilot at McCook Field. From July 1925 to mid-1927, he flew rebuilt de Havilland DH-4s as an airmail pilot for the Post Office Department over the treacherous Rocky Mountain routes between Cheyenne and Salt Lake City, sometimes under extremely adverse conditions. On 1 September 1927, when the Post Office got out of the flying business, Allen joined Boeing Air Transport, flying Boeing 40As as an airmail pilot on their new Chicago to San Francisco run. Over the next five years he began to do more and more test flying, particularly for Boeing Airplane Company, an affiliate of the Boeing Air Transport which later became United Airlines. In 1929, Allen was one of several pilots, including Melvin N. Gough, William H. McAvoy, and Thomas Carroll, NACA trained "in stability and control research techniques, including the ability to reach and hold equilibrium flight conditions with accuracy. As with all good research test pilots, the