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It came out of the east.

Slowly, the tiny speck grew until the men peering into the bright blue summer sky could see the outline of wings and hear the hum of an engine.

The airplane circled overhead, then dropped into an alfalfa field at the edge of Williamson Road.

It was 1:17 p.m. Sept. 1, 1921. Roanoke had begun its off-stage role in the Battle of Blair Mountain.

The pilot of that first plane called Langley Field, where his squadron was based, to tell them he’d found a good spot for them to light. By 6 p.m., 17 military biplanes had arrived.

Roanoke had strong economic ties to the coalfields. Norfolk & Western Railway, based in Roanoke, hauled coal and owned mines. The same Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency that worked for coal companies, worked for N&W, too. Baldwin-Felts had an office in Roanoke.

The miners’ march dominated the front pages of The Roanoke Times and the World-News, just as it did in newspapers across the country.

Gen. Billy Mitchell, America’s most famous World War I ace and the assistant chief of the Army Air Corps, saw the miners’ uprising near Logan, W.Va., as an opportunity to demonstrate the airplane’s worth as a weapon.

To do that, Mitchell scrambled the 88th Air Squadron, which was fresh from a dramatic demonstration of air power off the Virginia coast. For the first time, airplanes had sunk ships, German warships surrendered after World War I.

Mitchell sent the power that sank a battleship to face the miners’ army.

“We are heavily laden with machine guns, bombs and other accessories for reaching lawless bands in mountain passes,” the unit’s commander, Maj. Davenport Johnson, told a World-News reporter.

Each of the squadron’s DeHavilland DH-4Bs had a two-man crew armed with four .30-caliber machine guns and room for more than 300 pounds of bombs.

They would be joined in West Virginia by four Martin MB-2s based near Washington, which could carry much larger bomb payloads.

“Of course we don’t want to be quoted about the expedition,” unnamed officers told a Roanoke Times reporter, “but as a matter of fact, we, without any orders to base our opinion upon, believe we are in for a little of the kind of warfare we once thought was coming to us in Mexico, getting small bands of bushwhackers out from impregnable mountain passes.”

The planes refueled in Roanoke and their crews rested before continuing to West Virginia.

Roanoke Mayor W.W. Boxley greeted Lt. Rex Stoner, pilot of the group’s scout plane, with a welcoming committee, 2,000 gallons of high-octane gasoline and 200 gallons of oil. When the next wave of planes arrived three hours later, a crowd of Roanokers had gathered to see the airships sail in.

Edward Stone treated the airmen to dinner at the Shenandoah Club. The officers and some crewmen stayed at the Hotel Roanoke. The rest, about a half dozen, kept watch over the airplanes while locals visited the makeshift airfield.

A storm had muddied the field after the squadron landed, so the next morning’s departure began later than planned. Stoner took off at 6:30 a.m.

“He circled the field once,” The Roanoke Times reported, “and then was off in a straight line for West Virginia and her troubled section.”

Half an hour later, the second plane took off.

Half an hour after that, Lt. Valentine Miner’s plane roared across the field. The plane rose several feet above the ground before one of its left wings caught on a corn shock. Miner’s plane spun into a recently plowed field where its nose dug into the soft dirt. The plane collided with a telephone pole, then flipped — “turned turtle” according to the paper’s report.

Neither the pilot nor his crewman, Cadet R.C. Miner , was seriously injured. But the plane was virtually destroyed. The Army cannibalized it, shipping its undamaged parts back to Langley Field. What wasn’t salvageable was burned.

Two other planes stayed in Roanoke an extra day to attend to minor repairs, but 14 of the 17 planes left for Charleston on Sept. 2.

“At thirty minute intervals they continued to take to the air … cutting a straight path for Charleston,” The Roanoke Times reported.

Except for two. The reporter couldn’t have known it, but they would get lost and fly to Mooresburg, Tenn., instead.