The Legend of Icarus

In Greek legend, Daedalus was an Athenian architect and mechanist. Numbered among his (alleged) accomplishments were the fabrication of notable temples and altars. But it is also of the legend that he invented tools, including the saw and the axe. As his attributes made him so much the ideal synthesis of the artisan and inventor, we cannot do other than regard him as the progenitor of the engineer.

Daedalus was possessed of such strong professional jealousy that he murdered a nephew who showed a competing talent. As punishment, he was banished to the island of Crete and, while there, designed the Labyrinth for King Minos. This maze contained at its center the Minotaur, the half-man, half-bull monster kept by the king. To this beast were delivered every nine years the seven youths and seven maidens demanded by the king and received as retribution for the accidental death of his own son, which had occurred in Athens.

Unfortunately for Minos, his daughter, Ariadne, fell in love with Theseus, one of the Athenians brought to Minos for sacrifice. In search of a means to save the Athenians from the Minotaur, Ariadne sought the aid of Daedalus who provided the idea of using a ball of twine to retrace a route through the maze. Theseus entered the Labyrinth, slay the monster, and escaped successfully. When Minos deduced the role of Daedalus in the treason, he locked Daedalus and his son, Icarus, in a tower.

Daedalus proved himself equal to the challenge and observed to his son that "escape may be checked by water and land, but the air and sky are free." He then created pairs of wings for each of them, fashioned – in most accounts of the legend - from feathers, with wax employed as the glue. After sufficient practice to provide some confidence, they started out over the sea towards Sicily. Daedalus warned Icarus before the flight that he must maintain a middle course over the sea, for if he flew too high, the sun would melt the glue. However, feeling the exultation of flight, Icarus could not restrain himself, and flew too high. The sun caused the wings to come off, and he fell into the sea and drowned. Daedalus successfully reached the other island.

As it would appear that the hero of the ancient legend of first flight was more truly Daedalus, the resourceful engineer, rather than Icarus, the imprudent flyer, one might wonder why a figure of the latter was selected as they symbolic means of honoring those who have given their lives. Indeed, the wings of Icarus do remind us of and recognize the achievements of those who, in the modern image of Daedalus, conceive, design and develop the tools of flight. And it is the education and development of such engineers that is the mission of the Institute.

But it is the Icarus figure itself, and the legend of his tragic flight, which stands as a symbolic recognition of all downed airmen. It is thus a most effective means of honoring those graduates of the Air Force Institute of technology who have given their lives to their country and in the quest to master flight.