In 1917, anticipating a massive need for military airplanes by the United States during World War I, six Dayton businessmen including Edward A.

Deeds was also interested in building a public aviation field along the Great Miami River approximately one mile (1.6 km) north of downtown Dayton, purchasing the property in March 1917.

Deeds sold his interest in the Dayton-Wright Company to become a member of the Aircraft Production Board, on which he served until August 2, 1917, then accepted a commission as a colonel in the Signal Corps and became Chief of the Equipment Division.

His frustration with the fragmentation of the division and slow progress of the aviation effort led to a recommendation to construct a temporary experimental engineering station.

The Army had from the start intended at some point to relocate McCook's operations to a permanent home at Langley Field, Virginia, but Dayton's civic leaders did not want to lose this center of innovation and industry.

John H. Patterson, President of the National Cash Register Corporation (NCR), vowed to keep Army aviation in Dayton and began a local campaign to raise money to purchase a tract of land large enough for a new airfield.

Their intensive campaign netted $425,000, enough to purchase 4,520 acres (18.29 km²) of land east of Dayton, including Wilbur Wright Field adjacent to Fairfield (now Fairborn), Ohio, already leased by the Air Service.

In March 1923 Time Magazine reported Thomas Edison sent Dr. George de Bothezaat a congratulations for a successful helicopter test flight.