Day 15

Day 15 - Pilot

Link

https://en.osint4fun.eu/advent2025/20251215033000

Difficulty

medium

Rank

#108

Flags

Orville Wright Clarence Marshall Young

This photo shows Santa Claus receiving his pilot’s licence. The seated man holds the very first licence issued by this organisation.

Let’s start by searching information about this picture.

By Reverse Image Search, we can found multiple results of a larger version of the image:

Well let’s Reverse Image Search this one then! One of the result is from Wikimedia. That’s always a good source of documented pictures.

In the summary, description stands:

[…] pilot’s license from Assistant Secretary of Commerce. […] at the Commerce Department in Washington […] pilot’s license from Assistant Secretary of Commerce. for Aeronautics William P. MacCracken, while Clarence M. Young (right) Director of Aeronautics, Department of Commerce […].

That sure is a lot of “Aeronautics” and “Department of Commerce”.
In fact, by search “Aeronautics branch Department of Commerce”, we can found the FAA’s Wikipedia article talking about its creation under the Department of Commerce:

The newly created Aeronautics Branch, operating under the Department of Commerce assumed primary responsibility for aviation oversight.

We now know it’s related to the history of FAA. Let’s search for “first pilot certificate FAA”, we can found The First U.S. Federal Pilot License or the FAA’s history photo album.
Both contains the same information:

On April 6, 1927, William P. MacCracken, Jr. […] received Pilot License No. 1 […]. Before accepting the license, [he] had offered the honor to Orville Wright. […] Wright declined because he no longer flew.

We kind of already have the answer in the Wikimedia description earlier:

[…] while Clarence M. Young (right) Director of Aeronautics […]

That’s not his full name though.

But by searching his name Clarence M. Young, we can found his Wikipedia page giving his full name in the “Also known as” section.