But events were moving so fast for the Wrights on both sides of the Atlantic that infringement issues were soon shunted aside. On August 8, Wilbur made the first public flight of a Wright Flyer at Hunaudières race track near Le Mans, 125 miles from Paris. By the time he landed, aviation had been changed forever. The French, who had been so smug after the successes of Farman, Delagrange, and Santos-Dumont, were stupified. Although his first flight lasted less than two minutes and Wilbur was using the stick control for the first time, the grace and control of the Flyer left onlookers literally gasping. Over the next two weeks, Wilbur made about ten more flights, none of them more than eight minutes. He flew easily and gracefully, turning in deep banks, carving circles and even figure eights in the sky, all with control of the aircraft far beyond anything seen before. “Frenchmen seemed to vie with each other in giving the praise and credit so long overdue,” Aeronautics reported, “and all hasten to say ‘never had any doubts.’ ”
On September 6, after a flight of almost twenty minutes, Wilbur wrote Orville that “the newspapers continue exceedingly friendly and the public interest and enthusiasm continues to increase.” While Wilbur noted that some in the French aviation community “do all they can to stem the tide,” others, such as Louis Blériot, “are very decent.”
Success had a good effect on Wilbur. His tone in these letters of early September 1908 is uncharacteristically lilting; after a decade of experimentation, success, and then frustration, the battle to create a monopoly was nearly won. The only difficulties seemed to be an endless flow of dinner invitations from French luminaries, the inability to find anyone to work on the Flyer who could understand what Wilbur was saying, and a cranky motor that he could not get to work properly for any length of time.
The motor problem, while never totally solved, became moot on September 16, when Wilbur made headlines around the world by keeping the Flyer in the air for nearly forty minutes, covering twenty-nine miles at an average speed of forty-six miles per hour. All three marks represented official records. Also significant in these letters were Wilbur’s change in tone toward his brother; he now leapt on the tales of Orville’s prowess.
“The newspapers for several days have been full of the stories of your dandy flights,” he wrote to Orville on September 13, “and whereas a week ago I was a marvel of skill, now they do not hesitate to tell me I am nothing but a ‘dub,’ and that you are the only genuine champion skyscraper.” Wilbur was equally gushing to his sister. “When I made my first flight over here, the sudden change from unbelief to belief raised a furor of excitement I had not expected … but the news from America seems to have been sufficient to repeat the stir.”
Nothing, not riches nor fame, meant more to Orville than praise from his older brother. And Katharine, in a letter of September 12, added, “We are simply ready to explode and the town is crazy.” It is difficult to imagine Orville being any happier or more fulfilled than he was at that moment in mid-September 1908.
And Orville had earned the praise. On September 9, he shattered all records by flying, albeit unofficially, for fifty-seven minutes over the Fort Myer parade ground, traveling an estimated forty miles, landing only to perform minor maintenance to his motor. He then returned to the air, this time staying aloft for sixty-two minutes and reaching speeds of perhaps fifty miles per hour. A third flight lasted only six minutes but was made with a passenger sitting next to him. During the practice runs at Fort Myer, Orville flew higher, farther, and faster than anyone had before. His banked turns elicited the same awe in the United States as had Wilbur’s in France. “He drove his ship down the field far past the aerodrome and into the broken country beyond. Over the roofs of the post buildings he sailed, and he looked down on the graves in Arlington through the tree tops ninety feet beneath.”
All that remained was the official test. “There is no doubt,” Aeronautics reported in the issue that went to press just before the trial, “that the contract speed of forty miles per hour will be met easily.”
But even the best fortune can be fleeting.
* * *
* Léon Delagrange was a sculptor who purchased an early machine from the Voisin brothers, made a series of spectacular flights, and set records for distance, outdoing even Farman.
Orville and Selfridge
Glenn Curtiss was at Fort Myer as well. He had arrived in mid-August with Thomas Baldwin for the dirigible trials. Baldwin’s entry, dubbed Signal Corps Dirigible No. 1, was twice the size of the California Arrow and powered by a 25-horsepower Curtiss motor with a propeller designed by Thomas Selfridge. While Orville’s achievements were grabbing the headlines, Baldwin’s high-flying airship also impressed army brass and had, to many senior officers, more immediate application for scouting and communication. Although some considered Baldwin’s creation inferior to Count Zeppelin’s massive airships, Baldwin’s was smaller, more maneuverable, and thus would be “far more effective in time of war.” In the trials at Fort Myer, the dirigible easily stayed in the air for more than two hours, although it was clocked at 19.61 miles per hour instead of the contracted twenty. As in Europe, ten- to twelve-hour flights were anticipated.
But Baldwin also had his difficulties. On their practice runs, Cap’t Tom piloted the craft and Curtiss handled the motor. The size of the balloon initially caused navigation problems and at one point after Curtiss returned to Hammondsport, the motor turned balky, necessitating his return. Orville recounted his difficulties with glee in a letter to Wilbur. “Curtiss was here Thursday and Friday,” he wrote on September 6. “They have not been able to make the motor on the dirigible run more than a minute or two without missing about half its explosions. Ours runs without a miss. Selfridge has been trying to find out how we do it!” In fact, Curtiss repaired the motor and it then ran without a hitch.
That Tom Selfridge would be accused of skulking about attempting to appropriate the secrets of propulsion from Orville is an indication of the depth of distrust and enmity that had already built up between the Wrights and the AEA members, particularly Curtiss and Selfridge. For Orville and Wilbur to deduce that Curtiss had tried to steal their ideas concerning lateral control was reasonable; but Glenn Curtiss built the best-running, most efficient motors in the world. Even the Wrights had admitted that theirs were inferior, and as Orville well knew, a Wright-approved motor was giving Wilbur fits in France.
And Orville didn’t stop there. “I will be glad to have Selfridge out of the way. I don’t trust him an inch. He is intensely interested in the subject, and plans to meet me often at dinners, etc. where he can pump me. He has a good education, and a clear mind. I understand that he does a good deal of knocking behind my back.” He added in a letter to his sister, “Selfridge is doing what he can behind our backs to injure us.” To which Katharine replied, “I observe that Lt. Selfridge is always in the front row when it comes to wringing your hand! He makes me sick.”
Orville seems not to have expressed those sentiments to Curtiss, with whom he spoke regularly. “I had some talk with Mr. Wright,” Curtiss wrote to Bell, “and nothing was said about his patents on adjustable surfaces. He has nothing startling about his machine and no secrets.” Curtiss, however, had a view of the Wright motor similar to Orville’s of his. “The engine is the same as they had four years ago, being rather crude and not exceptionally light.”
Although no one publicly questioned Orville’s skill or experience as an aviator, particularly after his record-breaking flights in early September, he was flying an airplane at Fort Myer with a new set of lever controls that Wilbur had designed specifically for the trial. They gave him some early trouble. Curtiss also wrote to Bell, “The first flight was rather short as Mr. Wright said he was unaccustomed to the machine and the levers seemed awkward for him. He made a wrong move and headed for the tent [into a dive], which necessitated immediate landing.”
As the trial approached, an officer was needed to ride with Orville as a passenger. The Signal Corps had appointed a five-man “Aeronauti
cal Commission” to oversee the test and, for the infant science of aeronautics, three of the five were young lieutenants. The most experienced of the three was Selfridge, the only man in the United States military to have personally flown an airplane.1 As a result, Selfridge was chosen as Orville’s passenger, a decision that left Orville none too pleased, but Selfridge was far too well thought of for him to make his displeasure public.
On September 17, 1908, before two thousand spectators, both men took their places in the Flyer. At just after 5 P.M., the counterweight was dropped and the airplane sprung down the track. The Flyer made three circuits of the field more than one hundred feet off the ground, Orville stolid at the controls and Selfridge barely able to contain his excitement. He had flown June Bug, but that experience was nothing like this.
According to W. S. Clime, a photographer on the scene to record the flight for the army, “There was a crack like a pistol shot coming from above. I saw a piece of a propeller blade twirling off to the southward. For a brief period it kept on its course, then swerved to the left and with a swoop backwards, but in an almost perpendicular manner it fell for half the distance to the ground. Then suddenly righting itself regained for an instant its normal position only to pitch forward and strike on the parallel planes in front for altering the elevation, raising an immense cloud of dust that momentarily hid it from view.”2
There was a rush to the wreckage, and those arriving first saw that while both men were grievously hurt, Selfridge’s injuries were far more serious. The fuel tank and motor had broken loose in the crash and pinned him underneath. He was unconscious and seemed to be choking on his own blood. With mounted cavalry positioned to keep spectators away, both men were removed from the wreckage and rushed to Fort Myer Hospital. Although Orville had broken his femur and four ribs and dislocated his hip, doctors from the first knew he would recover. Selfridge had two fractures of the skull in addition to internal injuries. He was wheeled into the operating room as soon as he arrived at the hospital but never regained consciousness. Just before 9 P.M., he died.
Powered flight had its first fatality, Thomas Selfridge, an exceedingly bright and almost universally respected officer, only twenty-six years old, for whom everyone who knew him had only the highest regard, except perhaps for the man who had sat next to him in the crash.
The accident was minutely dissected. Orville later said that he initially heard or felt two thumps and then a louder one that shook the craft violently. He cut his engines and turned for the derrick and seemed for a moment to have control of the airplane, but then the nose suddenly turned upward and the craft began to drop. The rudder lever would not respond and soon they pitched forward into the ground below. Orville said that he was regaining control in the second before the crash and if he’d had another twenty-five feet of altitude, he might have righted it.
Tending to Orville or Selfridge after the crash at Fort Myer.
Examination of the wreckage showed that one of the new, longer propellers Orville had mounted for the test flight had cracked lengthwise and lost thrust, causing a disequilibrium that caused the second propeller to strike a support wire to the tail, which then wrapped around and snapped it.
There was a rush to dismiss the crash as the freak occurrence that it almost certainly was. An article appeared in newspapers across the nation saying only that after the propeller snapped, “the machine turned over in the air and fell to the ground.” It quoted Charles White, “a mechanical expert,” as discounting “any serious defect in the machine,” but “merely want of better construction of the propellers.” White added, “The aeroplane was under perfect control and the accident was not due to any fault of operation.”
The army agreed. An official inquiry absolved Orville of any blame and concluded the crash was an unavoidable accident, a fluke, and should not interfere with the Wrights’ returning to again demonstrate the Flyer whenever they were able. The deadline for meeting the contract specifications was extended for nine months.
There were, however, whispers that the real story might be different. Bell asserted that if they had used one propeller shaft instead of two, the craft could have been controlled and landed safely. Bell also noted, “When the accident at Fort Myer occurred, Mr. Wright did not know exactly what had happened, for the rudder and propellers were behind him, and therefore out of his sight. He did not dare to look round very much, for the operation of his controlling levers demanded all of his attention at the time.”3 Hinted at but never said was that Orville’s handling of the new lever system might have slowed his reaction time and lost him the seconds he needed to ease the Flyer into a controlled glide; also that his irritation at having to make the flight with a man he considered a thief and a spy had been a distraction. Finally, in a gesture the Wrights could only have considered a rank betrayal, Octave Chanute examined the wreckage and told reporters “if the Wrights had used one propeller instead of two, the result would not have been as serious.”4
But the most damning criticism of Orville came from his brother. In a letter to Milton, Wilbur lamented that the crash was “a great pity, a great pity.” He assured his father that he felt “sure we can keep such a thing from happening again.” Then, with damning offhandedness, Wilbur wrote, “I think the trouble was caused by the feverish conditions under which Orville had to work. His time was consumed by people who wished to congratulate and encourage him.”
To Katharine, he was more blunt. After telling her, “The death of poor Selfridge was a greater shock to me than Orville’s injuries,” he wrote, “I cannot help thinking over and over again, ‘If I had been there, it would not have happened.’ The worry over leaving Orville alone to undertake those trials was one of the chief things in almost breaking me down a few weeks.… It was not right.” As if in recognition of what he was implying, Wilbur hastened to add, “I do not mean that Orville was incompetent to do the work itself, but I realized that he would be surrounded by thousands of people who, with the most friendly intentions in the world, would consume his time, exhaust his strength, and keep him [from] having proper rest. When a man is in this condition, he tends to trust more to the carefulness of others instead of doing everything and examining everything himself.” Wilbur surmised that if Orville had not delegated the fastening of the screws to Charlie Taylor, but had done it himself, “he would have noticed the thing that made the trouble whatever it may have been.”
Katharine’s animus toward Selfridge had not seemed to have lessened in the wake of his death. In letters to her family immediately after the events of September 17, Katharine at no time expressed regret for earlier remarks or even mentioned Selfridge. She wrote as if Orville had been in the airplane alone. Finally, Selfridge rated two sentences in a letter to Wilbur, when she noted simply that his burial was to be the next day and that she sent a condolence card to his parents when they arrived in Washington and flowers to the funeral, which no member of the Wright family attended. By the time Selfridge was buried, discussion among the Wrights centered entirely on Orville’s injuries and rescheduling the trial for the Signal Corps.
But if the Wrights stayed away, members of the AEA did not. Curtiss—although he had again returned to Hammondsport before the crash—McCurdy, Bell, and Baldwin were named as honorary pallbearers, as was Octave Chanute. After the service, another in the odd events that surrounded the Wright patent claims occurred. As Bell, Baldwin, and some of the others were walking past the tent that held the remains of the Flyer, Bell walked in and measured the chord of the wing. Later, although the sergeant guarding the wreckage confirmed that the measurement was innocently done, simply a matter of curiosity and that the AEA members left afterward, the Wrights accused Bell and the others of using Selfridge’s funeral as an opportunity to take detailed measurements and steal their secrets.
The destruction of the Flyer should have left the field open for the only other entrant in the trials. But instead of an airplane, Augustus Herring delivered a series of weak excuses. First he asked for
a month’s postponement of his August 15 date because a weight fell to the ground while he was testing his motor and the vibration threw it out of tune. He promised to fly rather than transport his machine to Washington. Then he was granted a second month’s grace to complete the lightest and most efficient motor ever. Finally, on October 12, with no further adjournments possible, he showed up at Fort Myer—arriving by train—with two large suitcases and a wardrobe trunk in which were a few disembodied parts of the aircraft he claimed was not quite ready but when completed would dwarf the accomplishments of all who had come before. The army accepted this as a “technical delivery” and gave Herring an additional month to produce an actual product. In November, Herring assembled the press to report that he had indeed flown his two-surface machine on Long Island with excellent results, but because it sustained minor damage on landing it would not be available to be flown at Fort Myer until the next series of trials in 1909.
Herring’s claims to flight were reported but greeted with skepticism and some amusement. In fact, by the time he and his suitcases had left the nation’s capital, everyone associated with the trials saw him as little more than a flamboyant liar.* Or almost everyone. One man was sufficiently naïve to continue to take Herring’s claims seriously and he would pay dearly for doing so. The man was Glenn Curtiss.
* * *
* The New York Herald wrote, “The Herring airship is packed in a suit case. This is the safe way to use it.”
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