It is a great privilege to be here before you today at this lecture which honours the memory of Wilbur and Orville Wright and all that they brought to that very favourite subject of all of us—Aeronautics. I have chosen as my topic for tonight “The Role of Competition in Aeronautics”. My thesis is that competition has been extremely important in the advancement of aeronautics through the years. Much progress has come in the heat of competition. The monetary costs of competition are small and completely overshadowed by the economic benefits accruing from competition. Competition has been the life blood of aeronautics. We must keep competition alive. My objective in this paper is to stimulate in each member of this audience a strong personal belief that competition has been a major contributor to making aeronautics what it is today and a most necessary ingredient in the future of aeronautics.